The Frog Days of Summer

Well, Summer is officially at an end. Today marks the blooming of the last day lily. There is a feeling of Fall in the air. I'm not sure what it is - today is hot and the mercury will climb to over 90 degrees - but there is a certain color and feel to the air that says that winter is just beyond the horizon. The light is more golden and we lose the sun quite a bit earlier. The trees are acquiring a slight tinge of yellow. The October days are coming. There is not much to photograph in the garden any more. I did see this little guy in among the window box plants on the deck. He obliged me with several poses. Perhaps he knows that I will cherish the memory of small animals in just a few short months - when there is snow on the ground and the only movements will be the brown leaves as the wind scuttles them across the path. (Yes, there are squirrels - there are always squirrels - maybe that's a good thing?) I mourn for the loss of green. There will not be frogs, nor turtles, nor leaves on the trees. I will have to learn to love brown and grey again. We will have six months of stark white, mottled brown leaves and the grey of branches and twigs. It is a subtle not completely colorless environment, but it is a narrow palette of stark white vistas and cold blue skies and bare branches. This is a hard thing for someone from the jungles of the Southeast, so I store up my memories and concentrate on what I see in the Fall. For these precious days, I determinedly and heartily joy in the green.