The midsummer new moon, now approaching its week of repose, will allow a celestial canopy of distant stars to reveal themselves undimmed by lunar light. The season has awakened to a symphony of insect melodies: katydids fiddling, mosquitoes humming and crickets strumming love songs with which they and their kin have been expressing their passion over the unnumbered eons.

Shakespeare logically gave “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” a definite romantic twist amid a gentle season. This is a time of shifting dreams, when the year begins a noticeable movement towards shorter days and earlier sunsets. While it remains much too early for summer’s tropical heat to show signs of relenting, there is some hope. The sun’s shadows are growing a tad longer with each passing day.

We have been quietly granted, since the days when summer peaked, an extra three-quarters of an hour of darkness for our star-watching. And for the fisherman, it’s not quite so much of a shock to get out of bed and get situated on the favorite fishing hole by sun-up.

Moonlit or not, these warm, humid evenings of July were designed for sweet dreams of life and love.