Post 29/2023. I got up early to finish this week’s blog before we leave for a day out. I was at the computer for more than an hour when Marty called my attention to a beautiful sky created by the rising sun.

I took time out for breakfast and then cooked and cut the kernels off the cobs of five ears of sweet corn that we’ll not be able to eat in the next couple days.

I’m back at the computer, second cup of coffee (Balzac’s Blend) in hand. Saturday musings stirring.

Table talk

I’m musing how weather patterns must be a topic at round tables in many coffeeshops. (I had a taste of that routine in the 1970s at the former Elkhart Farmers’ Market and at the former Wilts Grocery Store where at the latter’s counter I could mix conversation with a breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast for under $2.00. Ah, olden days).

Were I at a current table round or square table, I’d venture this quote from Lord Byron (1788-1824) to the conversation:

“The English winter–ending in July,

To recommence in August.”

That’s far from a contemporary picture. Drought, heat, floods are part of the story again this year. And probably not a conversation helper.

The quote’s from Byron’s unfinished poem, Don Juan. Byron was a master of social satire. If the conversation would dwindle or veer off track, I’d offer another Byron quote: “The ‘good old’ times–all times when old are good.” I imagine some in this company of elders fiddling with their coffee cups and leaving the subject far from exhausted. Someone might say, “You’ve met your quota on quotes.”

The week in photos

Images from August on different calendars

The first photo below is of sunflowers in a field at Altona, Manitoba. It is part of a calendar produced by The Cooperative Climate Action Plan of the Co-0perative Development Foundation of Canada.

The middle photo was taken in Kidron, Ohio, by Tonya Wengerd, Everence Federal Credit Union member services representative.

“Butterfly Beauty” was taken by Chris Miller, a resident at Walnut Hills, Ohio, one of the nine Greencroft Communities members.

More about August than one may want to know

“Formerly called sextlis in the Roman calendar, the sixth month from MARCH (when the year began). It was changed to Augustus in 8 B.C. in honour of AUGUSTUS (63 C.C.-A.D. 14, the first Roman Emperor, whose “lucky month” it was. . . . It was the month in which he began his first consulship, celebrated three TRIUMPHS, received the allegiance of the legions on the Janiculum, reduced Egypt, and ended the civil wars.

“The old Dutch name for August was Oostmaand (harvest month); the old Saxon Weodmonath (weed-month, weed meaning vegetation in general); the French Republicans called it THERMIDOR (hot month, 19 July to 17 August).” From my ever resourceful The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (Cassell & Co. Ltd, 1970).

-John