Summer arrived on cat's feet Spring had already overflowed its banks and Summer merely crested carrying trees and stirring the silt whether it also had nine lives I'm not sure but even after an early frost and leaf drop the humidity returned a few times so that's got to be a few lives right there but who's counting and it's too early yet for an Indian Summer but then there's the phenomenon of false Fall to consider a near cousin to a false Spring and when it got cold again the squirrels shivered their acorns so many diamonds as they sang Well I'll be damned Here comes your ghost again But that's not unusual It's just that the moon is full And you happened to call a sure sign was probably the tomatoes whose stalks had browned but the garden still produced pumpkins and there were a few cucumbers still so all was well and all will be well until the cold takes Summer's last life and we desce...

Autumn gives a chill before it starts to claw the gifts of Summer back so today I saw the yarrow brown and withering and the thistle gone to silk and seed I'm not sure if this was the effect of the heat or a portent of Winter coming yet the clover thrives always the first to come back after the grass is cut and the chicory mimes its own success having escaped the mower and the heat but into the tangle of green I saw a shadow pass was it perhaps a garter snake or a field mouse quietly feeling their way either way they would prefer that I had not seen them even their ghosts wraiths of a longer night and so Fall exacts her toll with hands as cold as ice only doing her job so the flowers and the trees can rest in expectation of longer days and shorter nights and the promise of better light for some reason the groundhogs stood in attention in the mound in front of their dugout facing away from the street looking at each other's backs o...

Hydrangeas are a special treat of late Summer they are just starting now some sharing the blush cream colour of bridal roses others going red others still trending blue based on what's there in the soil for them to use in their effort to attact the bees and show themselves worthy of the place God gave them to give us joy as we toil to make ourselves shine and honour the light within us as we take satisfaction in the bounty of blooms the hydrangea shares unselfishly unpretentiously for the sole prupose of putting her own foot forward in that turtle slow race on uneven ground in stiff humidity in wilting heat that marks for parents the story of their children's source and origin as the sons and daughter's of life's longing for itself and the consolations for pain and those subtle sufferings that cannot sociablly be shared without fishing for sympathy or asking for consideration not a douceur or any sort of b...

When describing the appearance of a librarian in her novel Summer , Edith Wharton suggests that her librarian character has the "appealing look of the nearsighted".  The librarian is talking to a visitor who "was laughing with all of his teeth". It is true that we myopics do from time to time squint and fix our gaze a bit too long on others, especially when looking into their eyes--to the point of staring, perhaps--but what else can you do when it is hard to bring the world into focus and to keep the lines sharp and the colours from running.  We gain a lot of purchase on the present from the look in another's eye, and from its shape and from the shade it might theoretically match on the colour wheel. And we regret when we are shortsighted, whether nearsighted or not. And most unforgivable is seeing what isn't there, not even in the right circumstances! Still one can hope and from time to time glimpse the further shore.