It's the last Tuesday in August, and dismayed, I ask myself where summer has gone, or rather where it is going to so swiftly. This sweet and shaggy month is almost over, and its last dusty, golden days are something special, something to be cherished and carefully committed to memory.
As in other years, whole forests of frowsy clover are in bloom, and waist high stands of Goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace buzz with intoxicated bumblebees. Wildflowers sometimes wear fritillary crowns and most are sporting grasshopper brooches.
We haunt windy fields looking for Monarch butterflies and their offspring, always hoping to find gloriously striped children arrayed like royalty and clinging to the underside of milkweed leaves. There has been only a single Monarch butterfly in the air over the Two Hundred Acre Wood in the last week or two, but we continue to look for them at every opportunity.
In the field below the big hill, last year's milkweed pods drape themselves across their younger kin with insouciance or lean against the old rail fence like weary travelers. I never tire of looking at their thousand and one textures and the muted variegation of their earthy hues. Who knew that gray and brown came in so many delightful shades?
Yesterday afternoon, two wild turkeys crossed the lane in front of us. The proud mothers shepherded their unruly offspring before them like little brown sheep, administering a gentle peck here and a nudge there to keep their inquisitive (and garrulous) children moving. The two families jogged along at a fine rate, and their appearance was so unexpected that I didn't have a chance to snap a photo.
No comments:
Post a Comment