June is when the curtains part on summer’s first act. It’s usually a flashy month of sun and fun here on the Maine coast. But not this year. The characterizing feature of June 2023 was dankness most of the month — fog, rain, and unseasonable cold, often all together, often with high winds.

The opening of the sailing season in June usually is a time for applying sunscreen; this year, it was a time for buttoning up rain gear. Nonetheless, tourists still cruised the foggy coast in windjammers and gamely rowed back and forth to and from the classic vessels as part of rainy adventures ashore.

It goes without saying that sailing classes at the WoodenBoat School must have included lessons in foul weather seamanship.

However, we did have a few sunny June days to remind us that it was summer and provide a few spectacular memories. There were several brilliant dusks when activity in Great Cove appeared joyous; there also were mornings of reflected blue skies and, sometimes, we glimpsed the drama of wind filling big sails as storm clouds were forming.

There also were a few precious sunny scenes of clouds stampeding over Mount Cadillac in Acadia National Park; water lily pads rising; sun-dappled wooded paths; deciduous trees sending new leaves into a blue sky, and regiments of purple lupines standing at attention as we passed by.

One benefit of June’s precipitation was that it refreshed our abnormally dry May soil, improved pond levels and stream flows, and transformed drying bogs and ponds into pooling playgrounds for reptiles and amphibians.

As for the wildlife, June is a birthing month for many wild animals, including the birds who migrate here primarily to breed. That would include our ospreys that nest atop very tall trees and platforms where they are exposed to all of the elements that affect our coast.

Above, you see a handsome osprey that we’ve named Ozzie maneuvering on a clear day. Below. you’ll see Harriet, Ozzie’s mate, during a rain shower, briefly leaving their offspring, David and Ricky, who will be home alone for a few minutes with no mother’s wings to shelter under.

There are many ways of getting the feathered youngsters ready for their long flight south in the fall. For example, mallard duck mothers take on the sole responsibility of teaching their ducklings about life; common eider duck mothers form a “crèche” or nursery school with other, nonbreeding females.

June also is when many of the summer insects emerge, which is just fine for nesting tree swallows and red-winged blackbirds that have mouths to feed.

On the working waterfront, June and early July are the traditional opening times of the coastal lobster season. Masts and booms for dredging (“dragging for”) scallops have been removed from the vessels and traps are taken out of storage and loaded onto the boats.

Moving from the sea to the woods, June is when the delicate star flowers twinkle, Jack-in-the pulpits publicly pray, and bunchberry flowers huddle.

In the fields, wild iris emerge in June in their yellow flag and blue flag forms; hawkweed swoops up in its orange and yellow forms, buttercups fill with rain, and daisies brighten dark days and compete with lupines in a contest to show which can be more invasive.