August begins

My Cardinal Flower is flourishing in the courtyard garden.  The other day I watched a hummingbird dancing around it.

Glad to be talking about something else besides political peril.

Here's an August poem:

"How sociable the garden was.
We ate and talked in given light.
The children put their toys to grass
All the warm wakeful August night."

-  Thomas Gunn, Last Days at Teddington


and another:

"Open the window, and let the air
Freshly blow upon face and hair,
And fill the room, as it fills the night,
With the breath of the rain's sweet might.
Hark! the burthen, swift and prone!
And how the odorous limes are blown!
Stormy Love's abroad, and keeps
Hopeful coil for gentle sleeps.

Not a blink shall burn to-night
In my chamber, of sordid light;
Nought will I have, not a window-pane,
'Twixt me and the air and the great good rain,
Which ever shall sing me sharp lullabies;
And God's own darkness shall close mine eyes;
And I will sleep, with all things blest,
In the pure earth-shadow of natural rest."

-  James Henry Leigh Hunt, A Night Rain in Summer