The Perseids

 Apparently my son John and grandson Owen are my astronomical muses these days. They were the first ones to mention the comet a few weeks ago. Yesterday they mentioned that they had seen the Perseid meteor shower the other night. I had forgotten about it, and went out last night to take a look. It was past peak and I only saw one, but it was a doozy.

ibtimes

Being a day late and a dollar short notwithstanding, being outside on a starry night in August in Vermont is special. Fireflies and the sound of the crickets; shimmering stars and the Milky Way overhead. I remembered that this is usually the time for Stellafane in Springfield, Vermont. It's one of the oldest stargazing events in the country. It's been cancelled for this year, but I've been lucky enough to attend three or four times in the past.

Joe Pye Weed

 Wildflowers of August

 

Bouncing Bet

 

Butter and Eggs

 

 Joe Pye Weed 

One of my favorite wildflower names. The name sounds like it could come out of a novel by Mark Twain.

 

 

 

Hummingbird Moth

 Per the blackberry posting the other day, Allyn has extensive gardens here that she has developed and improved over the years. She spends about an hour a day in her gardens during the summer months. The other day she came in more excited than usual. She said she had seen the strangest looking insect. It was very big and very fast and looked like a cross between a hummingbird and a lobster. I didn't know what to say. I wondered if she had a patch of cannabis in her garden that she hadn't told me about.

On Saturday I went out to pick up the mail. There was something buzzing around in the dames rocket. It sounded like a pretty good sized string trimmer. It wasn't hard to spot. It looked like this:

meadow blog

Sure enough, it did look like a cross between a lobster and a hummingbird. It's called a Clear Winged Hummingbird Moth. It is a member of the Sphinx Moth family according to the Massachusetts Audubon Society. It is also unusual in that it is most active during the day, unlike most moths. Amazing.

flowers

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

Iris Murdoch

Page a day calendar on Gratitude

Plenty of rain from the remnants of the hurricane passed through last night. We really needed it as it's been very dry. I went out to mow the other day and just turned around and put the mower back in the garage. The lawn looked the same as it did when it was mowed a week ago. Shiny black crickets now hopping around outside.

August is also the season for corn. The corn stand has opened up in the usual place in West Rutland.

We've stopped in a few times to get some.

Eliza

This is way off topic, but my daughter, and her family all either work for or attend the same school in Brasilia. When Eliza (my granddaughter) was told that the slogan for the new school year was: Nothing

can stop what we can do together. Eliza's immediate response was: "Well, the coronavirus can."

 

Don't try to BS Eliza.

season of blackberries

It is August so it is the season of blackberries here on the other side of the creek. Wild blackberry patches are starting to display their seasonal offerings. We have a patch of blackberries in the yard that has a pretty interesting history. First of all, they are not wild, they are a cultivated variety and the difference is apparent upon close inspection. They were here when we bought the place some 40 years ago. Somebody started this patch sometime in the distant past. We don't know who or when.

The blackberry patch was an afterthought as we were busy raising a busy family here. We would pick blackberries there every August, but the area didn't receive any gardening attention. The area was untended when we moved here and it stayed that way for many years. It was overgrown with other plants and weeds, and it got to the point where the blackberries started to lose the battle to other more aggressive species.

At some point in the last few years, Ally decided that she wanted to bring the blackberries back. It may be because she brews an annual batch of blackberry brandy every year and that more blackberries were needed. She weeded out the area, no small undertaking, and let nature take its course. Year after year the number of berries has increased.

I went by the blackberry patch the other day on the way to the compost pile. The number of berries on vines and branches was shocking. There are hundreds of them.

Now there are more berries available than we could ever possibly use as far as I can see. Allyn might want to offer some to some of our neighbors. She made a blackberry buckle the other night which was delicious. It will be interesting to see what Allyn has in mind for the blackberry brandy operation this year.

Full moon, the "Sturgeon" moon is tonight.