Last Monday we woke up to silence. Our tenants had left on their long southern journey. No longer would our yard and sky be filled with rich, trilling songs.

Anyone who has ever hosted purple martins understands our love for these mesmerizing birds.

We eagerly await the arrival of the scouts in April. When our apartments are chosen, we revel in our good fortune. Once again, our martins arrived right on schedule.

This spring was going well for about three weeks. Then I spotted a starling on the roof of one of our Martin houses. My heart sunk. Starlings are more aggressive and larger than martins. They can take over the martin houses and drive away the martins and kill their babies.

I immediately called a local nature center for advice on how to prevent an invasion. “Starlings aren’t a protected bird,” the naturalist informed me. “Get out a pellet gun and shoot it.”

“I don’t own a pellet gun, and if I did, I would probably hit a martin or shoot out my neighbor’s windows,” was my reply.

I hung up and called Cornell University, America’s leading bird researchers. “We do not recommend shooting the starlings,” was the immediate response. “Unintended bad consequences often occur. Let nature take its course and hope you get lucky.”

Doing nothing is tough advice. We watched a pair of starlings build a nest in one of the upper apartments. The only thing we could do was remove all the suet from our bird feeding station. Starlings love suet, and we didn’t want to put out an invitation for more to come.

The weeks of summer sped by. No more starlings arrived, and our martin flock remained. By late July, little heads were poking out of the house openings and clamoring to be fed. Martins were swooping and singing in our skies from dawn to dusk delivering insects to their youngsters.

Now our flock is on its long migration to Central America or Brazil. Since many more birds left our apartment complex than arrived in spring, we are rejoicing in the birds’ successful parenting.

This winter my husband will have a large carpentry project. Both bird experts suggested building “excluders” for the apartments’ entry holes. These make the holes too small for starlings, but a perfect fit for the more svelte martins.

We are trying hard to be good landlords.

They are a bug that is easy to love. Dragonflies are sensational little drones, and they recently took over our lakeshore.

We woke up one morning last week to a yard alive with hundreds of these aerodynamic insects. Not being an entomologist, I can’t identify which of the 5,ooo species we are hosting. But I do know they are huge and clearly visible in the below photo of our front yard.

For a week, our yard resembled an air show. These creatures are amazing aviators who can mimic a helicopter and more. Dragonflies can fly straight up, down, backwards, hover and change direction quickly. And all the while they are grabbing prey with their feet and filling their mouths. One dragonfly can gorge on hundreds of mosquitoes a day.

Dragonflies, one of the first winged species, existed before dinosaurs, evolving over 300 million years ago. The fossil record shows that their wingspans in the Paleozoic era reached a whooping two and a half feet. Our modern dragonflies’ wings measure two to five inches.

Belonging to the order Odonata, these fliers undergo incomplete metamorphosis, in other words, they skip the pupa stage. The larva, which have gills, live solely in water for several years and eat aquatic insects, tadpoles and small fish. When the time to grow up arrives, the larva crawls out of the water and gulps air to expand. The outer skin splits and the adult dragonfly crawls out. After drying its wings, the newly minted dragonfly darts off. Most live less than a month.

One of our neighbors spent hours with his camera and tele photo lens and captured this image…not an easy feat when the subject matter is zig zagging at thirty miles per hour.

Twenty years ago, I embarked on the largest art project in my life. My husband and I collaborated to design our house. We challenged ourselves to plan a small (1,2oo square feet) well proportioned, easy to maintain and affordable house. In addition, we wanted the design to compliment the furniture we bought in the early years of our marriage. And finally, we wanted to enjoy the process and still be best friends when we moved in.

Before we began, two friends, one an architect professor and one a building contractor gave us brilliant advice. The professor told us, “On your budget, you can only build right angles; i.e., a box.” The contractor said, “On your budget, you can’t have anything custom made, all components have to be standard, ready made sizes.”

We do believe in listening to people who know more than we. Dreams of curved walls, odd shaped windows, exotic materials and unique built-ins were quickly scuttled.

Our first sketch was done on a napkin in a spaghetti restaurant. The elevations and floor plans were done on my husband’s Mac. We had a structural engineer check our final drawings to make sure our lovely design wouldn’t fall down on our heads.

The hardest part of the design process was thinking in 3D. We resorted to standing on a ladder in the framed house in an attempt to get the correct sight lines for the windows. I still do not understand stairwells, but, fortunately, my husband could visualize them correctly.

We have begun the twentieth year in our home, and every day we are still amazed that we have the good fortune to be here.

Now is the quintessence, the epitome and the apex. Summer is at its fullest, and I intend to luxuriate in every day of it.

Look around wherever you go. Summer is announcing its presence with flamboyance. From our vantage point, tucked between the lake, the fields and the pines, the scene is a feast for all the senses.

My promise to limit my weekly blog to a minute read precludes a complete inventory of high summer symptoms, but here is a start:

• The Purple Martins are swooping, chirping and feeding their babies from dawn to dusk.
• Ice cream has never tasted better.
• All the cats have extended their afternoon naps, and Taj sleeps on the cool marble table.
• The day lilies are a riot of orange and yellow blossoms.
• Farmer Dennis’ glossy green corn field across the road grows visibly taller each day.
• Monarchs are omnipresent in the yard, flitting from blossom to blossom.
• The sun is still setting late allowing for long after dinner porch sitting.

The marketers who constantly tell us to buy tons of stuff do not want us to live in the moment. Huge  profits can be made if they can train us to buy things in anticipation of future events.

I plan on saying “no” to the current back to school promotions. I’m simply too busy enjoying summer.

At times, I fantasize on things that should be invented. These thoughts usually are triggered by a messy, dirty or frustrating experience.

My latest idea is a winner for us klutzy people: car upholstery with a camouflage pattern of coffee stains. Fabric in shades of brown and tan with subtle overall splotch designs would ease the pain of all those car coffee spills.

My next proposed invention is for drivers who live in climates with masses of bugs in summer and tons of snow, slush and salt in winter, places where cars stay clean and shiny about ten days a year.

The solution is obviously the home garage car wash. Just drive in your own garage and press a button as you leave. The car is washed and blown dry, ready for a gleaming exit the next morning. Why owners of McMansions have not demanded this as a standard feature is beyond me.

My last suggestion is for a small, inexpensive yet desperately needed invention, a glue bottle that doesn’t glue its own top shut every time it is used. This is a minor frustration for everyone that uses glue. For us art teachers it is a major and dangerous frustration. Imagine 30 kids all excited to start an art project of cutting and gluing. Now imagine 30 glue bottles solidly glued shut. We teachers resort to scissor blades, bent paper clips, knives and other sharp and ineffective weapons to open the bottles as quickly as possible.

The biggest educational initiative in our schools now is S.T.E.M. – science, technology, engineering and math. Get going on some inventions, kids. And remember, we don’t need more stuff in America. We just need stuff that works.