The sky is a July blue this morning with mother of pearl clouds drifting by. A sea of poppy heads floats along the garden path. I shake them and listen. Can I hear the poppy seeds rattling inside? Not yet, but soon. It won’t be long before I’m spreading poppy seed jam on morning toast.

It’s the season when perennials rule. There’s no effort required. No spring planting. No weeding. The perennials take over and bloom. The bees are happy. We are happy.

The latest chicks are growing fast. It’s time to think of new names. What goes through the minds of chicks? It’s hard to fathom. Their senses are so different than ours. For one thing, as we go about our daily lives, we can’t see behind us. We hardly ever see our backs. Yet chicks, with their eyes on the sides of their heads, with their heads high above their bodies, always have a good view of their backs and what’s behind them. How different would our thinking be, if we had the peripheral vision of a chicken? We’d rarely be taken by surprise by something sneaking up behind us. Such vision would profoundly change all the mystery novels ever written. No lover would ever be able to sneak behind their loved one, cover their eyes, and say, “Guess who?” Cars wouldn’t need rear view mirrors because drivers could always see what’s behind them. There would probably be a whole category of accessories for our backs since we’d be aware of what they looked like. Hairstyles would be vastly different. “Do you want short bangs on the back of your head, or long bangs?” We wouldn’t have sayings like, “Forward and onward” because we’d be just as focused on backward as we would on forward.