Herrick Approved

Depending on when you are reading this, summer 2023 has already begun or is about to. We have scads of people who worry about the meticulous calculations required to connote the precise moment when the transformation occurs (for the record, it was/is shortly before eleven this morning), but I'm sort of with nature when it comes to the shifting of the seasons. 

That mindset's worked out well, at least for me, for over seven decades, and I'm not all that comfortable thinking I can do better than Mother Nature (besides, if it's not broken don't fix it, right?). The Summer Solstice, which is what today technically is, means that we are having the MOST daylight we will have for this entire calendar year, and (sadly from my perspective), every day through Friday, December 22, will have just a tick less daylight. 

As the Cavalier poet, Robert Herrick, offered, "Gather ye Rose-Buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dying." If you want to read that as a suggestion to visit the Veterans Memorial Rose Garden at Rockwell Street in Mohegan Park, by all means, go ahead. 

When we talk about must-see places here in Norwich, both the Rose Garden and Mohegan Park should be at or near the top of anyone's list. This time of year, most especially (because I have daylight to burn metaphorically speaking), Mohegan Park is a delightful destination and that's not including the disc golf course that I keep meaning to try out and yet still haven't. 

On sunny, even when it's not summer, days, I walk around Spaulding Pond, admittedly no longer with quite the vim and vigor that I once had back in my young and innocent days, and I'm always among friends even if we've not yet met. 

This time of year, I'm always enthralled by the canopy of tall trees, mostly oaks I think, forming over parts of the pathway, sometimes completely obscuring the sky above while on the pond banks, maples, and what we used to call poplars where I grew up, hug the shore.  Intermingled among them are pine trees which I'll notice more as the colors of the leaves on all the other trees start to change this autumn.

Everyone I meet in Mohegan Park is friendly in that smile-and-nod-while-passing way, more so than when we meet on the street elsewhere in Norwich, but to be honest that's as true of me as it is for them. And that might be why so many of us go to Mohegan Park; to recreate as well as re-create ourselves, our hearts, and our spirits.

I always take a pocketful of peanuts for the chipmunks and squirrels I hope to encounter. We have squirrels at my house but no chipmunks (maybe the HOA has something to do with that?) so I always look forward to seeing them while walking along the path at Spaulding Pond.  Other people come for the fishing, and I always ask (quietly to not disturb the anglers or the fish) 'How are they running?' though when people do tell me, I don't know what to make of the answer. 

There's always a gaggle of geese and other waterfowl, all hoping us bi-ped visitors pay no attention to those 'Do Not Feed the Waterfowl' signs posted everywhere. And on weekends, as the parking lots fill, the picnic tables are a high-traffic area and so is the pavilion. 

Summer is the perfect season to enjoy our year-round asset, Mohegan Park, and if you're lucky, you can keep all the rosebuds ye may have gathered. 
-bill kenny