Rough fruited cinquefoil, like many flowers, makes its appearance, hangs around to be enjoyed for a short season, and then quietly vanishes from the scene as part of Maine’s summer plant cycle. Photo by Dana Wilde

The phoebes have gone. They rolled in around the beginning of April, as always, and departed by late July. By mid-August, the nest over the kitchen window was still and quiet.

Their absence is hard to describe. The ovenbirds arrived in May, as always, and spent two months in the woods announcing summer over and over. Their last shout circled in around mid-July. This always happens, round after round. No matter how many other little birds show up, the ovenbirds are conspicuously absent in August. Even though you never actually saw them.

The coltsfoot along the driveway came and went in April, as always. Then the dandelions came and went, then the hawkweed that last longer than just about anything else. The lupines, June and gone. Valerian in June, gone by late July. And while the valerian aged, the cinquefoil appeared like botanical gold, and went wherever it goes, too. Nothing gold stays long enough. Then Queen Anne’s lace and meadowsweet move in, steeplebush and white sweet clover.

“Where are Grammy’s orange flowers?” Silas asked around the first of August, meaning the tiger lilies Bonnie planted by the deck, knowing they’d outlast her.

“Gone by,” I said.

“Where did they go?” he said.

What a question.

A tiger lily, like many flowers, makes its appearance, hangs around to be enjoyed for a short season, and then quietly vanishes from the scene as part of Maine’s summer plant cycle. Photo by Dana Wilde

Well, I said, if you keep watching you’ll notice that flowers come and go all summer. Like the roses in the hedge over there, remember the pink flowers just a couple weeks ago? They grow up and blossom and live for a while and then they …

“They pass away?” he said.

“Yes, they pass away.”

“Like Grammy,” he said, matter of fact. “They’re up there” — points a thumb upward — “with Grammy?”

“Yes, it’s something like that, for sure,” I said.

July vanishes and then August is made of goldenrod. Fields and roadsides filling up with sprays of rough-stemmed, downy, Canada, tall, stiff and early goldenrod. It goes on into September. It too departs. The seaside goldenrods can keep on a long time, winding with the hawkweed and the summer constellations into November and disappearing behind the sun.

One night in July we heard a weird whispering sound outside a bedroom window. It turned out to be a juvenile barred owl sounding like a wraith, a scant few feet away in the syringa or maybe the Bebb’s willow. By the middle of August the whispering subsided. The juvenile was gone. The familiar call of the adult circulated in from the woods at night, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?”

The phoebes arrive in April and light up the yard with their flycatching, their nest above the kitchen window. Bonnie loved them particularly because they were the emblems of the family life, to her. By August they’ve departed, to who knows where. Absent all winter, as always.

Like every flower you can think of, they’ll be back. And the ovenbirds, the goldenrod and roses, tiger lilies, all always going their own epicyclic ways like the wheeling season itself which always ends and always comes back. Something about always in absence.

Dana Wilde lives in Troy. You can contact him at dwilde.naturalist@gmail.com. His book “Summer to Fall: Notes and Numina from the Maine Woods” is available from North Country Press. Backyard Naturalist appears the second and fourth Thursdays each month.