Colors of September

September is a season unto itself.  Summer holds on to the hem of autumn with warmth of days, while fall sneaks into the year with chilled nights. 

 

Leaves shaded with leopard and tiger like stripes warn of the advancing year. 

I like them very much for their exotic coloring, but the red, orange, and golden hues of autumn await to be called for the grand show.

Soybean fields are turning from green to yellow to brown as temperatures linger in September modes of chill nights and warm days. 

I love this time of year when apples redden, pumpkins turn orange, and golden corn stalks and bright bales of straw decorate suburban homes, but...

 there are still pink zinnias in the garden. 

Linking up with Rural Thursday today.  

Rural Thursday: Queen Anne's Lace

Is there anything more rural than a ditch filled  with those happy wanderers from gardens of long ago and nature's favorites?  Yes, nature loves teasels and thistles and dandelions and golden rod.  Afterall, didn't she make them so hardy they we need not tend them like the fragile ballerinas that wave on slender stems in the garden? And of these strays Queen Anne's lace is the most lovely.

 I'm sharing on Rural Thursday today.  Take a walk down a country lane, turn left and there you are...

Rural Thursday: Down a Country Road

Now it's time to take a jaunt of your own over to The Rural Journal, just click on the badge and be whisked away...

Rural Thursday with Alice

A lovely gray kitty showed up at a house down the road. The little girl with long brown hair and gorgeous brown eyes that lives there named her Alice.

How Alice got there is a mystery, but people have a tendency to drop off unwanted animals down country roads and drive away leaving the animal to fend for itself.  How could anyone do this to Alice with the lovely green eyes?

Alice just bore a kindle of kittens, but once the kittens are weaned and homes are found, Alice may travel to Toledo to live with my good friend MJ, who just happens to be the pretty brown-haired, brown-eyed girl's Nana.

 Alice is a sweetheart and deserved better than to be left to her own devices, but I have a feeling her luck is  about to change for the better. 

I'm linking up with A Rural Journal for Rural Thursday. Are you intrigued by country living or curious what's happening out in the wide open spaces? Then you'll definitely want to click on the badge below...



 

Country Musings on a Morning in Spring

Once upon a time in the fertile, flatscape of northwest Ohio there were farms scattered hither and yon.

Where a farm wife planted lilacs from starts her mother gave her while a windmill groaned a breezey melody from high above.

Silly farm foul goose stepped while playing hide-n-seek.  "Can you find me behind the tree?" she squawked with glee.

A donkey, content with the sweet spring grass, peers curious.

Lonely outbuildings and empty silos stand as testament to long-gone stewards of the earth who worked to the rhythms of the seasons weather roulette their game of chance.

  The dust of 100 year old straw filters through the cracks of decay as paint and a way of life fades from view leaving only the sun worshipers with their wings outstretched greeting the morning.

Driving down the back roads of rural areas across the country is both beautiful and sad.  There's something splendid about old barns, the weather, the wear, the strength that harbored creatures great and small. The patina of graying wood, the slivery silver surfaces of fences that no longer corral anything more than tall grass and unloved plants.  Yet, there are stories imagined and real of families and lives lived in these now lovely hollow places.

I'm linking up with A Rural Journal for...