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End of Summer

“It’s funny how sometimes the people we know the least make the greatest impression on us.” 

There comes a warning like a spy
A shorter breath of Day
A stealing that is not a stealth
And Summers are away — (Emily Dickinson) from The End of Summer

From a previous post: Hummingbirds

Bridge of Flowers, Shelburne Falls, MA

End of Summer.  Bridge of Flowers, Yankee Candle, Kringle Candle, and our favorite stop, Wagon Wheel Country Drive In, Gill, MA. Below, last few images before winter take its charge.

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Just let them come

Sometimes I am just to lazy to leave the back patio. So, I just wait for them to come to us. The lingering light was rapidly falling tonight, but not before a Deer wandered nearby.  The  night sky stood an inky canopy of darkness when it came back later on its journey home, a bit to dark for a good picture though.

 

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More Back Yard Fun

While rain is often desperately desired for home lawns and gardens, it can bring problems.  One of those ‘problems’ can pop up quickly literally overnight–mushrooms. The majority of mushrooms are nuisance problems, appearing repeatedly if conditions are right. They may have an odor. They are annoying but cause no damage to the grass or to our landscape plants. Most fungi in lawns are beneficial, because they decompose organic matter buried in the soil, releasing nutrients that are then available for plant growth. Never eat mushrooms growing in your lawn or garden. The majority are poisonous.

…….And one more thing, they sure are beautiful. Capture the image before things dry out

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Challenge Yourself

Grab the kids, put down the cell phones, pick up your camera and for a moment, sit still and just look around. A photographer can bring life what you thought was just your mundane back yard. As you can see, we just love the Cardinals.

 

 

 

 

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Summer Cardinals

Sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, suet or even broken up peanut, offer them, and they will come.  If you are lucky enough to have one, carotenoid-rich bright red berries from dogwood trees are also a favorite.  Diet plays a part of why they are red. So, why so red. You would believe that bright red would be a easy visible target  for hawks and owls.  However,  by responding to redness as a sign of a promising mate, females have encouraged the evolution of bright coloring in males. This process is called sexual selection. It turns out that male cardinals are probably bright and loud for the same reason: to advertise what good mates they’d make. Sexual selection is often powerful enough to produce features that are harmful to the individual’s survival. For example, extravagant and colorful tail feathers or fins are likely to attract predators as well as interested members of the opposite sex.   for more click here

Anyway, just sit back and relax and forget about all the science for a few minutes and watch and listen in your back yard.

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

Click on and image for nature at it’s colorful best

Louise: “How did you get here?”
Johnny: “Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.”

 

“You have to believe in happiness, or happiness never comes … Ah, that’s the reason a bird can sing — On his darkest day he believes in spring.”

 

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Aggression

Many birds show aggression when they feel their breeding territories or feeding areas are violated by unwelcome intruders and hummingbirds are no exception. Below, a viscous attack leaves one dead, still clutching the twig it perched on.  The will fly high above them before diving nearly straight down right at the intruder.

 

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Long Day

Grammy Gramster told the doctors she eats lots of vegetables. I didn’t know chocolate and wine were vegetables.

Hummingbirds keep me sane today.

“The hummingbird
is not just another bird.
Its heart rate’s 1,200 beats per minute.
Its wings beat 80 times a second.
If you was to stop their wings
from beating, it would be dead
in less than 10 seconds.
This is no ordinary bird.
This is a frickin’ miracle.
They slowed down their wings
with moving pictures,
and you know what they saw?
Their wingtips are doing that.
You know what the figure eight
is the mathematical symbol for?
Infinity. Infinity!”

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Watch here

Or here

 

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.  Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

“When my husband died, because he was so famous & known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me — it still sometimes happens — & ask me if Carl changed at the end & converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage & never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief & precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive & we were together was miraculous — not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous & so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space & the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me & it’s much more meaningful…

The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.“

– Ann Druyan, talking about her husband, Carl Sagan

 

we’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?