Late summer, comin' on fall

I love this time of the year. Cool mornings and evenings, super-hot days mostly gone, the smell of vegetation reaching the end of its summer cycle. The prairie dogs look fat and happy, their coats starting to lose the darker summer color and morph into the winter version. You know it could, hypothetically, snow any day, but the feeling in the air is more like this will go on forever. Late summer, comin’ on fall.

Every year around this time, my partner and I are all excited about how colorful the meadows get during this season—tapestries, we call them. I was taking some pictures of those for a project of hers, and that started me noticing all the distinctive things that happen in the world in late summer. Here’s a smattering of snapshots of such things: tapestry meadows, late summer grasses in mowed fields, cottonwood turning gold—branch by branch, thistle going to seed, late summer flowers surrounded by summer-dry grass, branches weighed down by seedpods, green apples, ripening tomatoes … and a couple months’ growth in one corner of my spectacular new maintenance-free garden!

                        

    

  

       



 

Worth a leisurely walk, for sure!