The ride home
Before we know it, the mustard will be blooming again and the car windows will be down on the ride home from work. There are a lot of cows out this way. When my oldest daughter was little, we didn't know the names of the different breeds....still don't. She called these the "peanut butter cows."
I think this is a wheat field. After living over here for 16 years, you would think I'd be better versed in cow breeds and crop identification, but no....These are from the first year or two that I started taking digital photos. This field is just up the street and around the corner from our house.
This field is amazing. I pass it every day at least once. I don't race through life, and take the 'long way' to or from work at least once a day....the ride home is probably my favorite part of the day, depending on the season. I very often stop to take a picture or two. This field looks different almost every month of the year...it would probably make an interesting calendar. It's almost never planted with a crop, that I remember. Nearby stands an old victorian house known as "the milk house." I don't know if the "milk house" property is actually a farm. I think it has always been rented to groups of related or unrelated people since we've lived over here. I think my husband has been there once or twice. Anyway: a landmark. And a very pretty field.
August
The hills look old. They are the brown of shorn grass. Leaves become less green at this time of year. They droop limply and heavily from the branches. The breeze can barely summon the strength to move them. Everything is ripe and tired and overgrown. Wild plants are so heavy with butterflies that they cannot hold themselves up straight. They are too tired and have thrown up their hands in surrender.
The damp rushing air smells of dry grass and ripe corn. A gold orb of light drifts across the road ahead: the eye of a fox in search of mice. The moon looks like a giant toenail clipping, casually tossed. Huge, ghostly humps of circular haystacks march across the dark fields. When we look, they stop moving. As soon as we look away, they creep carefully.
Katydids argue with increasing volume. Their rhythmic chant is a soothing brain massage. Later in the month they will make me think of new notebooks and pencils, and butterflies in the stomach before the first day of school.
A cat chases invisible beetles and toads, hopping from roadside to field and back again. He seizes upon a locust and the sudden loud noise frightens him. The dumb beetles hurl themselves clumsily here and there, trying to remember what they're supposed to be doing.
Glow-in-the-dark disks of Queen Anne's lace whoosh by the car windows like passing stars. The industrial shrieking of grasshoppers becomes louder at night, almost deafening when the car passes closest to their campfires. Every living sound and smell is magnified to penetrate my sleepiness.
The damp rushing air smells of dry grass and ripe corn. A gold orb of light drifts across the road ahead: the eye of a fox in search of mice. The moon looks like a giant toenail clipping, casually tossed. Huge, ghostly humps of circular haystacks march across the dark fields. When we look, they stop moving. As soon as we look away, they creep carefully.
Katydids argue with increasing volume. Their rhythmic chant is a soothing brain massage. Later in the month they will make me think of new notebooks and pencils, and butterflies in the stomach before the first day of school.
A cat chases invisible beetles and toads, hopping from roadside to field and back again. He seizes upon a locust and the sudden loud noise frightens him. The dumb beetles hurl themselves clumsily here and there, trying to remember what they're supposed to be doing.
Glow-in-the-dark disks of Queen Anne's lace whoosh by the car windows like passing stars. The industrial shrieking of grasshoppers becomes louder at night, almost deafening when the car passes closest to their campfires. Every living sound and smell is magnified to penetrate my sleepiness.
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