Shine On Harvest Moon

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

A Barrow Full Of Blooms

The First Sergeant (hubby) went shopping to our local DIY store this afternoon, and returned with a truck load of perennials.......
All marked down to one dollar a pot, twenty pots in all, a mixture of white and pink Coneflowers, and garnet colored Coreopsis.
Despite their end of season bedraggled appearance, I was over the moon, and can just imagine how pretty they will look in the beds next year.

Don't you just love a bargain !

We Shall Never Forget

Together we pause to remember the victims,
to grieve with the families and friends of those who died,
and to honor the heroes of that day and each day since,
who have sacrificed to save lives and serve their country.

An Elephant Never Forgets

When I first watched these videos I couldn't stop crying.

First aired in 2000 "The Urban Elephant" brought viewers the touching story of Shirley and Jenny, two crippled elephants reunited at the Elephant Sanctuary in Howenwald, Tennessee.
To learn more about the Elephant Santuary visit here:
The Elephant Sanctuary : Hohenwald Tennessee

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
~Henry David Thoreau

(Please turn off the MIXPOD music player before watching the videos, by scrolling to the bottom of the page, and clicking the LARGE ROUND BUTTON on the MIXPOD player )

By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy coat the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Silver : Walter de la Mare

Autumn Cottage

Autumn is in the air, and for the past three days we've been led to believe it's already upon us.
Cool mist-filled days, and cooler, crisp nights.
The trees are beginning their changing of color, yellows, oranges, and reds.
The songbirds now busily returning to their winter homes.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

To Autumn : John Keats 1795-1821

Cooling Rain

A break in the heat
away from the front
no thunder, no lightning,
just rain, warm rain
falling near dusk
falling on eager ground
steaming blacktop
hungry plants
thirsty
turning toward the clouds
cooling, soothing rain
splashing in sudden puddles
catching in open screens
that certain smell
of summer rain

~ Summer Rain : Raymond A Foss

Summer Rain

We had rain today, a gentle-falling rain, the kind where you can use an umbrella without fear of it being turned inside out.
If you listened carefully you could hear the trees and flowers, heaving a big sigh of relief, their roots and foliage drinking in every last drop of moisture.
The temperatures fell, and for the first time in several weeks we enjoyed a tolerable 81degrees.
Oh, how I love days such as this.

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Nobody Left To Love Me

Someone always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses left too long abandoned
to turn old and gray.

Weeds pushing apart . . .
Trees gone wild,
Fields taking over
Shredded curtains blowing in the wind.

Beams of weathered wood . . .
No longer able to hold in
The soft heartbeat of Home.

Autumn's Calling

"September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours,
But in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.
The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of what remains of his brief life.
The bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath,
And their shrill and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds,
Now silent or departed."-

~ September Days : Rowland E. Robinson, Vermont.