JUNE

THE SIXTH MONTH • 2021 JUNE HATH 30 DAYS

Hark, the honeybee's low hum Tells us that the summer's come! –Frank Dempster Sherman

Farmer's Calendar

Most years, it's sometime in June that the mosquitoes arrive to finish up whatever blood has been left us by the blackflies, whose high season comes a few weeks earlier. Whereas the fly is little more than a black speck that somehow bites, the mosquito is a creature whose menace is evident in its form: a syringe with wings.

Still, the mosquitoes hereabouts are neither particularly large nor particularly aggressive. In these parts, mosquitoes come and go. Some years there will be few or none. Fortunately, we needn't be without them, even in an off year. Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack for 1748, gives a recipe for mosquitoes. "In a scarce summer," Ben writes, "any citizen may provide Musketoes sufficient for his own family, by leaving tubs of rain water uncover'd in his yard; for in such water they lay their eggs, which when hatch'd. . . . put forth legs and wings, leave the water, and fly into your windows." Make of that what you like. Ben worked in Philadelphia, but he was a Boston man by birth and schooling, and he has the anarchic, deadpan Yankee wit that looks you blandly in the face and dares you to doubt.

Listen to the Farmer's Calendar at Almanac.com/Podcast.