I need to admit that all my life I never liked August much. I was always so busy stressing on the hateful winter that was coming, that I never took the time to appreciate August for August’s sake, and for August’s blessings. So much of your perspective changes when you get old. I am old, and I have a big birthday number coming up soon to prove it. This year I’ve learned to see and hear and savor more of August for what it is, not what comes next. I’ll share some observations.

In August, you can hear the crickets early in the morning and the cicadas on hot afternoons, singing their music in the trees. The big black crickets get in the garage and I make them go out so they’re not trapped in there, cos their lives are short. The grasshoppers can fly now and they jump out of places in the garden and fly away.

August gardens are still producing good things, like Mortgage Lifter tomatoes and lots of Hopi Lima beans.

Sometimes it’s important to remember to appreciate wonderful things in August, like this big bush in the yard. 10+ years ago a neighbor who was in high school had some 6″ sticks with several leaves and almost no roots, and gave me one. She said it was a dogwood tree and I should plant it. I did, and it grew and it has been such a sanctuary for birds here, year round. I wrote a blog about it before. https://sarasinart.net/2020/06/23/a-sanctuary-in-the-yard/

This time of the year it gets little blue berries on it that the birds like, and white flowers for all the pollinators.

One of the sweetest things I ever see in the garden is bees sleeping in flowers, like this little bumble bee in a bean flower.

I won’t disturb your sleep little bumblebee, or your work collecting your pollen from flowers all around. You know your life is short because it’s August. It’s the August of my years too, and winter will come soon. But for now there are bumblebees with pollen on their butts, and tomatoes and beans to pick, and butterflies, and grasshoppers that can fly. August is good.