August on the Meadow

 

Summertime. 

The dog days of August are busy days for the birds 

(and the bees) with little ones learning to perch and fly and forage. And speaking of bees ...

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should,
for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Our current feathered visitors include a late and motley crew of evening grosbeaks.  

A family of three. Mom and Dad and one young 'un. 

 

Two finches at the breakfast bar enjoying a bit of chatter about the weather perhaps . . .

And our beautiful hummingbirds are gone now. They leave in mid August with just one or two coming through in the final few weeks of August.  We leave our hummingbird feeders well tended till the frost is on the pumpkin ~ just in case a hungry little flyer drops by for a fuel stop. 

Once the swallows give up the clothes line it's time to hang a load of laundry on a summer's breeze.

 

Sweet sweet swallows.

A Sand hill Crane lifts his lankiness seemingly without effort and balances way up there : )

The end of summer is in the air.

I do not know this author or her book but I do love this quote attributed to Ms Babbitt.

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

 

Blessed we are and ever thankful.