Sketchcrawl

pen and ink, watercolor, finished while chatting with online friend, Teri, this week

July is history, and we're heading into August.  The weeds are winning out in my flower beds, and I water the potted plants with less enthusiasm than I did in June.  Since it it dry (flood waters having receded leaving lines of scum and acres of dead grass) the mosquitoes are marginally less evident than a few weeks go.  The cicadas have begun their electric thrumming, but there are fewer fireflies lighting the back yard than there formerly were. The wasps are winning the contest with the hummingbirds for the bottled sugar water in the hanging feeders.  Note to self - buy some of those bee traps for the deck.

We're heading into a month I used to enter with mixed feelings.  August always means our county fair, though the past few years I've gone and not recognized a soul.  It's the month of my husband's birthday and our anniversary.  It also used to be the month when I had to try to ignore back to school advertising, and begin thinking of my return to the classroom.  No more. Summer can last for me until frost kills my flower beds.  It's not over until the last blossom drops, and that won't be in August.  As for the heat, I decided years ago that I would only complain about one season, and I picked winter.  

It has been a while since I posted a poem, so today I offer Sunflakes.

Sunflakes

by Frank Asch

If sunlight fell like snowflakes,

gleaming yellow and so bright,

We could build a sunman,

we could have a sunball fight, 

we could watch the sunflakes

drifting in the sky.

We could go sleighing

in the middle of July

through sundrifts and sunbanks,

we could ride a sunmobile,

and we could touch sunflakes--

I wonder how they'd feel.