Farewell to shadows of bluebells on white chicken coop walls…
Farewell to pleasant afternoons hanging laundry on the line in the company of friendly toads…
Farewell to grasshoppers, and white trumpet vines, and all other such elegant pairings…
Farewell to barefoot days at the edge of the lake……
Farewell to the haunting serenade of loons…
Farewell to daisy bouquets made by small hands, and smoky sunsets, gifts from forests burning far away…
Farewell to cumulonimbus, those splendid, tall ships sailing by in the sea of the sky…
Farewell to restless, flitting warblers in green, green meadows…
Farewell to lush gardens decked in the thousand diamonds of sudden morning showers…
Farewell to the brief, warm nights, sparkling with celestial beauty and fireflies, humming with mosquitoes…
Farewell to all the sun-ripened berries hiding under the leaves…
Farewell to picturesque encounters on whimsical summer evening drives…
Farewell to all the babies, now raised and grown…
Farewell to dancing swallowtails in ballrooms of flowers…
Farewell, sweet summer; welcome, glorious autumn!
orange hawkweed
The Colors of Summer
Whether the calendar says so or not, the last day of August always seems like the last day of summer to me—and seeing that always makes me kind of sad. Nothing against fall or even the coming winter, mind you. I truly love the changing seasons. It’s just that summer in Minnesota is somehow just a little briefer than the other seasons, and I never quite manage to get in all the swimming and fresh peaches on ice cream that I want to before it’s time to pull out the sweaters and hot cocoa again.
As sort of a solace for this, I decided to look back over my photos from the summer months to remind myself of what we did do—and in the process, I found a rainbow. See if you can see it, too!
Red is for ripe wild strawberries discovered along fence rows, sweet and warm with sunshine…
and roses outside of bakeries that smell of gingerbread…
and poppies along the chicken coop.
Orange is for a monarch butterfly, minutes old, clinging trustingly to my wide-eyed daughter’s finger…
and the one weed in my yard that I don’t mind…
and flower arrangements in my mother-in-law’s bathroom.
Yellow is for the elegant beards of irises…
and the freckled faces of the lilies along the porch…
and the not-quite-so showy roadside weeds that nevertheless delight the avid, amateur flower-pickers in my family.
Green is for sun-dappled woodland ferns…
and black-eyed Susans not quite open…
and water droplets on nasturtium leaves.
Blue is for swan families floating on riffles of water…
and plump round berries the color of the sky going plink-plunk in pails…
and bobolinks singing on telephone wires against the morning sky.
Purple is for brilliant masses of fireweed…
and stormy skies at sunset…
and blue flags along the creek.
“You [O Lord] have established all the boundaries of the earth; You have made summer and winter.” (Psalm 74:17)
