Nature Note:Dry Summer

It's been a dry summer so far.The lawn stopped growing at the end of June.No one is complaining about that.We've had a lot of thunderstorms,but they only rain a tenth of an inch or so-that's about .25 cm of rain.The weather is as dry as a cicada's song.The dogday harvestfly,a kind of cicada,started singing here just this morning.They'd been singing farther west for some time,their song gradually moving east.It's an eerie rattle.