JOY ALONG THE WAY: LIQUIDATING THE RICHES OF JUNE

I've been withdrawing big fat checks from the Bank of June every day. On the endorsement side there is that familiar description of the month in little flowery letters, "What is so rare as a day in June when if ever come perfect days..." I boldly endorse the checks by looking and listening and seeing all that is glistening.

The checks are designer checks, no two are alike. One features the multitude of pink, rose and lavender petunias. They hang generously from four pots, two window boxes and spread their loveliness from four sunken pots on display tables. It takes a lot of early morning pinching to remove the wilted blossoms so that new ones can come along for replacement, but during that time there are still riches to squander -- waving to early morning folks going to work or joggers who might stop to discuss the quality of the day before us. Petunias yield compound interest on the initial investment, such interest being marked every hour as they unfurl and spread their perfume.

Another June check features the day lilies. Like me, they cash a new check every day, discarding yesterday's blossom in favor of the new one. I prefer the yellow ones. They light up the premises, appearing to be big golden stars that fell in the night. This check is lucky enough to be fragrant, courtesy of the yellow Hyperion, which, so far as I know, is the only one that has this feature.

Here's an all-blue June check. I wander slowly about the yard while cashing this one, lingering long by the larkspurs. They are alive with bumblebees, causing the slender stems to bend and sway as if waltzing to "The Blue Danube."

So far, the butterfly bush has only six plume-like blossoms on it. But the purity of the blue makes me stand and stare and wonder if, indeed, the blossoms are too blue, in need of some contrast. Then I remember that ere long the big yellow tiger swallowtail butterflies will be there to remedy this blue intensity.

In a little damp place under the lilac bush there is a patch of blue. I have finally learned the name of it for all you who have been asking. You will recognize it from this description by a New York Times nature columnist. "It is a ground cover, has beautiful display of small violet-blue flowers..... small scalloped, heart-shaped leaves that have the mint tang." It is gill-over-the-ground. When you pick a length of it, a whole lot that you didn't expect to come up, does. It seems to live on nothing much more than air. Mulch gives it very little trouble.

Yesterday's June check was full of sound. I cashed it slowly. The purple martins were agitated. They kept circling their condo, a different worried-like note in their warbling. Something's wrong, I thought. Or maybe the hatch was happening. Could the fledglings be coming off the nest ready to try out the world? Even the sparrows who share an apartment in the condo (to my annual dismay) were upset, flying around with their eternal "cheep, cheep." I saw some unidentifiable blob on the lower porch floor of the condo. Time for the binoculars! It was a dead bird. A fledgling had ventured out of the nest and somehow got its head hung up in a porch railing, a sort of partial abortion.! It took a ladder, a rake and helping Viola to remove it.

After a little while, that vicinity returned to normal. But what's this? A lesser cricket at the base of the garage is tuning his fiddle. There was the buzz of a bumblebee as if flew by, very close, to my ear, and the clicking noise of a grasshopper on its first flight. All early insect sounds, only the overture for those to come next month with a whole new pad of generous checks to cash at my leisure.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.