Buon Ferragosto!

 A Short Walk on Ferragosto.....

It doesn't seem like mid-August.  Ferragosto.  The 15th August.  Feriae Augusti, initiated by the Emperor Augustus (when he was merely Octavian) to give workers a break, then adopted by the Pope to combine with the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.  

When I went to live in Rome, in August '76, it was blindingly hot, and around Ferragosto almost everything was closed - shops had their blinds down for weeks, the whole city seemed to be asleep.

I spoke to a friend in Calabria last night.  It was very very hot, but she was planning a family picnic under the trees today.  I remember summer days in Italy, a little lunch then a sleep in the shade.  August was a quiet month.  In fact, many summers I travelled north to escape the mid-summer heat, and later, the fires and the Canadairs, the acrid air......

So today, in the comparative cool of Norfolk, under grey skies, with a hint of drizzle just speckling my camera, I take Amanda for a walk.  And, to my amazement, we find ourselves in early Autumn - far from the glare of summer......

Sloes are darkening; crab apples are swelling in the hedgerows.  There is even a mushroom arising out of a rotten log.....

Beech mast is dropping from the trees, falling and opening.....

Hazelnuts await the squirrels:

Sweet chestnuts are forming on their twigs:

And Blackberries are getting ready for the pie:

Thistle down is whisping in the breeze:

The seeds of Rosebay Willowherb are all set to take off:

And the sticky buds of Burdock are almost past their best:

While the bright berries of the Rowan are ripe and ready to pick to make jelly with the crab-apples:

It's all very well, but only the other day it was Spring, and then yesterday was Summer.  Who knows where the time goes?  

Life is upside down.  A second year begins to fray and decline; a second lost year, with few meetings, little travel, enclosure and isolation.  

Forgive me this, but, "Hare today....

Gone tomorrow....."

Across the evening sky,

all the birds are leaving,

But how can they know,

it's time for them to go?

Before the winter fire,

I will still be dreaming,

I have no thought of time.

For who knows,

where the time goes?

Who knows,

where the time goes?

Sandy Denny

Who Knows Where the Time Goes

1967

https://youtu.be/jsqztvHIB9Y

Buon Ferragosto my friends.....

Make the most of today, for who knows...?

[All photographs taken on the Wild Ken Hill estate, Snettisham, Norfolk, between 08.30 and 10.30 on August 15th, 2021, with my Pentax K-3, mounted with a Pentax - DA 1:2.8 35mm Macro lens (limited)].

Season of Mists

Summer's End

I'm feeling a little sluggish today.  It's been so hot, and then we had the tempest, and now it's humid.....  And everything has slowed down.  

Summer's end's around the bend just flying

The swimming suits are on the line just drying

I'll meet you there per our conversation

I hope I didn't ruin your whole vacation

Just a week or so ago I was photographing butterflies sipping nectar, and newly fledged birds were pestering their parents for food....  And then came the great heat and every living thing just hunkered down in the shade, panting for water, saving its energy.  And then it rained, for forty days and forty nights it seemed, and just about everything got in the ark and sailed away.....  And now, it's quiet.  The buzzard will perch with the dove (ok, pigeon).....

And those same wires are the gathering place for young swallows, about to dive south to avoid the cold of winter.....

My daily walks have seen the seasons swell and bloom, and now the harvest's in and seeds are ripe and young are grown, there's a peace upon the landscape, a slow, almost dull heaviness.  The hares are lacking their spring, 

Mixed flocks of tits twitter to keep together in the bushes, but they aren't singing....

There are fishermen about, filling themselves with plump young fry....

Or just enjoying the play of running waters

Most of the harvest is in.  Some fields are drying still, but the pigeons are having a field day, gleaning the fallen grains....

And the littler birds (goldfinches, sparrows, yellowhammers, et al) are feasting on thistles and other light seeds.....

And in the meantime the bees, and flies, are carrying on where the butterflies left off....  Presumably they have not been as affected by the rain?

It is strange to think that, on Ferragosto (or, if you prefer, the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary), the summer seems to have come to an end, and autumn is beginning.  Season of mellow fruitfulness?  I suppose, if you consider that Spring is getting ever earlier round here, then it is inevitable that Autumn must also creep back in the calendar?  It can hardly become later, can it?

And it may perhaps be in my imagination that these misty days are autumnal, but see these pictures, all taken in the last day or three:

Parasol

Bramble

Field Maple

Hazel

Elderberries

Hawthorn

Sloes - Blackthorn

Acorns - Sessile Oak

Acorns -English Oak

Beechmast

As I said, things are slowing down.  Although swallows continue to scissor the air above the fields, their speed a reminder of how fast the time is flying,

The rest of the world is slipping into lethargy.  

I admit to a certain tiredness, a listless feeling that this virus has worn us all down, and that the future is a darkening tunnel.  I have no faith - not in the leaders who care more about themselves, and power, than the hot-polloi.  Nor in any hope that life will return to 'normal' at the end of this tunnel.  There are good things, of course, and, for my part at least, things could be much worse.  

But I am feeling sluggish.... 

Forgive me.....

The moon and stars hang out in bars just talking

I still love that picture of us walking

Just like that ol' house we thought was haunted

Summer's end came faster than we wanted

Come on home

Come on home

No you don't have to be alone

Come on home

Come on home

No you don't have to be alone

Just come on home

Summer's End

John E Prine / Patrick James McLaughlin