I fall asleep at night wishing for a sudden arrival of morning. The early morning is a quiet and wonderful place I go to every day, and every day I say a silent pray of gratefulness that I am here walking the familiar few steps to my kitchen. Making coffee, raising the blinds and saying a hushed hello to the little upside down squirrel in the elm tree who is always busy stealing the bird feed.

I then go to my small makeshift studio to see the sun, who has, through the night, taken the place of the moon, as it peeps through the undressed windows. It is a simple ritual, but so important. Coffee is on and TV is off as I try to harmonize with the new day.

These mornings are far away from the “brisk” mornings of my youth.

Then, I was awakened suddenly by wind up alarm clocks, a baby’s hungry cry, or a child’s energetic flight down the stairs … abrupt wake up sounds that once filled this house with much energy, movement and love. Now, it’s a morning bird at my bedroom window that wakes me up.

It is summer and somewhat quieter outside my bedroom window, however. The hurry and hum of the spring is over. The baby birds are grown; they have left the nest and their mothers have less to do these days. I am thinking they are flying with more liberation and less hurry as they rest from the hasty spring mornings of hungry baby birds and dangerous skies.

I hear them again in the late afternoon, their sounds are not as soothing as the morning sounds, they are, instead, nearly deafening as they compete with the tree frogs and locusts.

The Full Buck Moon is in the night sky as it changes from June to July. Nocturnal bugs collect around our porch lights at dusk and the cicadas call in the middle of the day when the heat is deep and the trees are still.

Our gardens have been hit by the heat but the okra continues to grow tall and stately as though it were in the West African sun, giving us food for our summer table and winter gumbos.

Celeste figs are simmering on stoves and canning jars are popping as this month of heat and fireworks travels swiftly by. Soon, the bees will share their honey with us and the earth will be prepared for yet another bounty of fall vegetables to grow in our backyards or purchase at our farmer’s markets.

Nature will repeat her eternal march as we try, once again, to synchronize and stay in step with her faltering lead.

I end this rambling of words and images of the season with a humble thought and underlying wish for health and harmony in our small neighborhood of this big world. And, with the granting of this wish, I wish again that we extend our harmony to the next “neighborhood” and, as nature does, we all continue our march to the light.

PAM SHENSKY is a wife and mom to five.