Welcome back to Magnetic North, where fireflies light up the nights and the meadow wears a rainbow of flowers. As always by mid-July, we are awash in yellows: birds’-foot trefoil and buttercups. Then there are the purples of clovers and joe pye weed. The daisies: big, small and nearly invisible. And, to the foragers among us, of course, the itty-bitty strawberries hiding beneath leaves so close to the ground only a clever bear could sniff them out. My summer’s harvest of these fruits wouldn’t fill a tart shell. But I’ve got my eye on two fabulous wild raspberry patches that will fill a corner of my freezer.

That is....if I remember to go pick. Mainly because even with so many more hours of daylight, there seem to never be enough to get everything done. My to-do list of chores looks like the outline for a farm-based reality show. Take this entry, for example: move the mallards to the p...
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