It’s warm and it’s green. It’s a time to dream. It’s short and it’s sweet. It’s a sandy beach and bare feet. But more than anything else, summer is loud.

Summer is like a symphony of noises, mostly generated by motors and machinery, punctuated by the vocalizations of excitable dogs, birds and kids. Around here, the most common sound is that of the lawn mower; this is because our grass and weeds grow at a rate of about six inches per hour. People like to complain about it. Too much work, they say.

Funny thing is, those folks actually love to mow the lawn. I know this because I see so many of them out there, especially with riding mowers, tooling around the yard every day. Even if there’s been a drought and the lawn is dirt brown, they’ll be out mowing up a dust storm. They grouse about it, but the truth is they enjoy the gentle bouncing, like a baby on a knee, the butt cheek vibrations, and the constant inward circling. It puts them in a drone-like trance.

There’s a big guy up the street, the body builder type who lifts weights in the gym every day. He drives a big truck, lives in a big house (having added on several rooms) and rides upon an enormous mower. The only thing small is his yard (a consequence expanding the house, and I suspect he is now eyeing his humble neighbor’s yard as if it were Greenland). His chariot/mower is as loud as it is big, and, because his yard is so small, he can’t make circles; hence, he is constantly switching from drive to reverse. I want to tell him he could do it faster with a trimmer, which is less obnoxious. But, as I said, he is a large and powerful human, and I am a coward.

The king of loudness is the leaf blower. Dormant through most of the year, it amps up in late summer and fall. Last year, A feud began across the street when one woman, Carol, blew leaves into her neighbor’s yard. She claimed that the leaves came from a tree that was mostly in the neighbor’s yard, and therefore were the responsibility of that homeowner. The neighbor, Denise, claimed that leaves are free spirits, and cannot be owned by anyone. Well, given such irreconcilable philosophical differences, it was Game On!

Carol upgraded to a Ryoby Super Blower Mach 7 model, which can blow away small shrubs and double as a pressure washer. Denise would defend her property with a Hercules Hurricane Hydraulic blower with an adjustable nozzle that can blow in multiple directions at once. After three days of intense blowing, the war ended when all the leaves had disintegrated. Carol lost most of her hair and Denise is now deaf.

Imagine the sound of a mosquito that keeps buzzing around your ear. Imagine it a thousand times louder, and you are now hearing the clarion call of the crotch rocket hero of my neighborhood, a true speed demon! The local police, despite having tried more tricks and traps than Wile E. Coyote, have failed to catch this elusive road runner. Residents’ concerns go beyond the noisy disturbance; they live in fear of witnessing the inevitable outcome – a glitch, or some small object in the road resulting in the dismounting of the rider, whose body will be collected in several pieces over a quarter mile from the point of mishap.

Another sound of summer begins with an ominous sign – a deep, thrumming crescendo approaches, like the shark in Jaws. Soon it’s on your street, and the pulsing drone has swelled to a throbbing bass that shakes the foundation of your house and stirs up an intense desire to practice shooting at moving targets.

But it’s not that serious. It’s usually just two guys cruising the streets, making their presence known. I believe it’s a kind of mating signal, like the grunting warthog, or the croaking bullfrog, and the whistling gibbon. The booming boys are on the hunt! I worry though that if they do get lucky – if a couple of hot-to-trot females heed the beckoning boom and come thither- where will they ride? The back seat is occupied by speakers the size of small dumpsters.

Tree trimmers and mulchers, stump grinders and jack hammers, backhoes and choppers, blood-curdling screams from kids on trampolines… These are the sounds of summer.

Yet there are times, at dusk when the world is half lit and a gentle quiet pervades. Recently, on such a soft summer eve, I took out my saxophone. Near an open window I began to send out melancholy strains of Gershwin’s “Summertime.” Then I hear a voice from a window down the street: “Turn that thing down. I’m trying to watch TV!”

Pete Howard, a musician, writer, teacher, and painter, lives in Dunkirk.