The Dog Days of Summer

Summer is still here. I have a bushel of peaches to slice and send to the freezer and a bushel of corn to blanch, and freeze today. A watermelon is napping in the corner of the kitchen. Several large zucchini are waiting to be processed into loaves of sweet bread. I will serve sliced crimson garden tomatoes on a pretty pink glass plate with supper. (There are few things as pretty.)

The sun has made all the plants in hanging pots droop. Only a few pink and purple petunias still raise their colored trumpets. The pansies in the bell bed are all gone. I saw a flowerbed of zinnias yesterday. Oh, I love the colors and shapes of zinnias.

A pair of barn swallows is feeding a third batch of nestlings under the eaves of the porch. There is a little painted bunting at my seed feeder this morning. He is a regular visitor. He’s so bright colored that I almost think he can’t be real. The American Goldfinch is another bird I watch for. He is bright yellow with black trim in the summer.

The temperatures are roving around in the nineties. We are probably past all our 100 degree days here in Oklahoma. These are the long stretched out days when summer seems to linger on and on. They are days that make me long to reread To Kill a Mockingbird, while I listen to cicadas throb their song and wait for fall.

Here is my poem about the last days of summer.

Dog Days

The porch swing hangs heavy.
The potted plants sigh;
But none is so hot or
So weary as I.

The music of crickets,
The buzz of the fly
Is droning unanswered
Tired and dry.

The sun on the garden
Has dried every leaf
The vines have all withered
Gone summer’s feast.

The Queen Anne has faded.
Is no longer white.
All life waits in stillness
For coolness of night.

We watch for the promise
Of color on trees
Of pears and of pumpkins
To come with the ease,

Of cooler and wetter
Oh, welcome relief
From the dogs days of summer
The satin cerise

Of summer’s late sunsets,
Those guarantee all
The geese winging southward
God sending us fall.

Elece