I was watching the toy-like Cessnas and Piper Cubs come droning home, returning to the Vinland Aerodrome. They made their twilight turns and settled down beyond the trees, the way herons land lightly on our pond.

Were they returning from important errands? Or were their pilots simply inspired by the desire to leave the earth for a spell? No such mystery about the ultralights that buzz our hill like devil’s darning needles. They were going nowhere, back and forth. I was tempted to run for the shotgun and see if they were in range. But that would have been violent. It would have required physical effort, too.

As if mimicking the flying motorcycles, two doves circled by and landed on the gravel drive not 50 feet away. Back and forth they strolled, nuzzling amorously. But suddenly another dove appeared and perched in a nearby tree.

The he-dove on the drive had been looking forward to a relaxed session of bill-and-coo. But now he had to abandon his paramour. Up he flew and when he’d gained sufficient altitude, he dove like a falcon and drove his rival off.

It was midsummer. Too hot to lift a finger, except to take a flick at a passing fly. A time to brood, to cast out questions and reel, hoping to land some big, flopping answers. A time for hammock duty. Assignment: break in the hammock pillow my dear wife gave me for my birthday in mid-July.

A cool spell earlier in the month had driven off the burning doldrums. In the morning, the valley was hung with a veil of mist as if Leonardo had painted it. Spiders’ weavings, glistening with silver dew, adorned every blade of grass. They were lovely, those intricate gallows on which hung an infinite number of innocent bugs.

The 25 chickens that had arrived in late May in a box no more than a cubic foot had grown as big as ostriches, thanks to who-knows-what genetic tampering. I made the mistake of counting them as if they were already in the freezer.

One morning I discovered five of them without their heads, the work of a raccoon, according to my chicken-raising manual. Raccoons turn out to be fastidious gourmets. They eat the chickens’ throats alone and leave the rest of the corpse to the flies. Then they decapitate their victims, by way of leaving a calling card. Nature is not a coddler. Even in Arcady, death and ruin find their way.

The heat wave took another five chickens. On the past day of July, I took the 15 survivors to the processor. To speak plainly, I had them slaughtered.

“Now in midsummer come and all fools slaughtered” A great poet wrote those words. But are they true? A downturn in the number of fools would be welcome. But there seemed to be as many fools in the middle of July as there had been last spring or in midwinter.

Which of us hasn’t earned that designation in recent days? Remember how we rejoiced that the laws of economics had been repealed, that greed was good, that you can have your cake and eat it too? Didn’t we all go on a binge before the bubble burst?

One immortal truth could have saved us: What goes up must come down. But we were having too much fun to pay it heed. Now we must repent. We must relearn the virtues of self-denial and how to do without. “A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the back of a fool.” Thus says the Bible.

But isn’t it a shame? Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could gorge ourselves without getting fat? But not so fast! Somewhere I read that scientists have crossed a strain of voracious mice with a strain that doesn’t gain weight. They might one day be able to do the same for us. Is this too much to ask?

So I mused in my hammock vigil. Pedestrian musing were lofty enough. The hammock was as high off the ground as I cared to soar.

Should Ted Williams’ remains be cremated or frozen at a cyronics lab in Arizona? Should the commissioner have allowed the all-star game to end in a tie? Should the American Taliban be glorified in a country & western song? I reeled in no answers to those perplexing questions.

The sky looked as if its painter in a fit of exasperation had squeezed out all his tubes of pink, gold, silver and pearly gray and flung the contents like strings of warm taffy across the themeless sky. A few oafish clouds lounged on the horizon, unmoved by the hot, pedantic wind. Just before darkness, one Jove-like cumulus formation loomed above, looking down in compassion or judgment? before it melted like wax into a shapeless ruin.

George Gurley, who lives in rural Baldwin, writes a regular column for the Journal-World.