Wednesday Blooms - A Midsummer Afternoon's Dream

August is upon us, ignoring the calendar. The crickets are chirping.  Goldenrod is blooming all along roadsides. 

We actually got some rain in the last 24 hours. We probably got close to 1/2 inch at our house, and I think certain areas of our county got almost 2 inches. Could our drought be breaking?

Our grass is brown and not growing, and Queen Anne's lace white has replaced green in many lawns.  I've never seen so much Queen Anne's lace.

Tonight, on an exercise walk through the West Side of Binghamton, a city in upstate New York, we went down a street we normally don't.  What initially caught my eye was a container with a dwarf canna growing in it.  An orange flower was starting to open.  And then we saw the tall yellow flowers.  Taller than us.

The flowers looked like dahlias to me but the foliage didn't. 

As I was preparing to take the picture with my phone, I heard a beep.

A car was preparing to enter the driveway. I was standing too close.  He waved at me to move, which I did, and he pulled in and parked.

A man with grey/white hair got out.  My spouse approached him. "We were admiring your flowers.  Do you know what type of flower the yellow flower is?"  He didn't.

But he wanted to show us something, and walked up his driveway. We followed. We will never go onto a driveway, or otherwise onto someone's property, by the way, when I take photographs.  So, we were fortunate that he showed up when he did.

We saw the fake owl first, then the dangling strips and then - loaded grape vines.  It was a grape arbor, with white grapes awaiting harvest hanging everywhere.  How shady and inviting it was!

These were California grapes, the man explained.  Last year (the year of our heavy rains) he wasn't able to harvest one grape.  This year, he was hoping for a bumper crop, if the birds stayed away. (hence the owl and the dangly strips.)

We thanked the man for his time, and walked on.

A later further on stood a Rose of Sharon, loaded with white blooms.  I am aware, by the way, that there are several flowers that bear the name "Rose of Sharon" so I will refer to this Korean import by its Latin name, "Hibiscus syriacus". 

The hot weather has broken for a few days. I walk along, dreaming about an endless summer, a summer that will not end with trees starting to turn color, the cold winds starting to blow, flowers black with frost, and the promise of ice and snow.