Early Fall on the meadow

O!! October! The pure and concentrated colors of the planet. The crisp air, the autumn grasses on chilly mornings and the sunsets that come earlier now! All the wondrous energies of spring and summer merge like a celebration around a big fall bonfire. It's 'Heads Up' season too ~ watching for the crack and crash of an old pine or fir tree as it succumbs to age or disease and an unrelenting wind. Flannel sheets dry on the line in under an hour in an afternoon breeze, or freeze dry!! if left out overnight. Love it all. This time of year. October.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Eliot

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~ Stanley Horowitz

August on the Meadow

Random  moments in August  ~ in no particular order.

Doe on the ridge.

Wildflowers and Yarrow somewhere along the stacked log fence.

David's patience pays off with these Heron shots

 View from the creek, across the meadow and into the blue beyond.

Bees on 'Bearic's'  Valerian 

Looking over a willow thicket and towards our front gate

a favorite place for bears

Garden posies

One late August morning there was a hard frost and we awoke to a wonderland of frozen grasses and weeds where the sprinklers had run overnight.  We irrigate with a gravity feed from the creek. 

A moment of setting sun.

Mandy with Sweet-peas : )

And now, it is September.  A glorious time of year!

Summer Meadow Pics by Vincent

I've been meaning to get these pics up for a while now. This is a collection of meadow pics taken by David's brother Vincent toward the end of June. A very wet summer brought forth an explosion of wildflowers, mushrooms, lichens and moss ~ it's a beautiful thing. Especially after 3 years of hot dry summers. We're seeing wild flowers and mushrooms we haven't seen before...

Pixie or Faerie cups

soft lush mossy ground

This is called Old Man's Whiskers or Prairie Smoke. The pic above is one Vince took in late June and the photo below is a pic I took a few weeks later at it's full blown stage. Such a pretty flower ~ for a name like Old Man's Whiskers : )

Meadow Arnica

Mushrooms of infinite variety. and more loveliness

Thanks for these great meadow pics Vince!

Fledglings, feeding and feathers

Busy birds one and all. Here are a few photos of our dear, delightful barn swallows. They are voracious eaters of mosquitoes which is only one reason we love them.

And not forgetting our four legged friends. Seen here taking a stroll across very wet hay meadows.

The little guys. Barn swallow babies. It is truly amazing how fast they grow.

A female Rufous Hummingbird

~ Mist on the meadow ~

One of our much loved Evening Grosbeaks

Flight school for swallows ~ in the pouring rain

A Red Winged Blackbird and his fledgling enjoying some easy pickin's from the feeder.

Almost everywhere we look right now the feeding of young 'uns is underway!

A pair of sweet Tree Swallows captured on camera by David the other morning.

And in closing I leave you with a Chinese Proverb: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.