Fall evening

The light on an early evening in fall is great--illuminating the front meadow and our neighbor's big oak. The sprawling aster (probably a New England aster cultivar), is swarmed by bees, and the clumps of Indian grass (a wonderful replacement for non-native ornamental grasses for us) is spectacular.

Good to be home

After a quick dash to the mountains this weekend, I'm finally feeling at home again. The light was extraordinary at sunset.

It illuminated the perennial border and the front meadow.

And Mocha, after a long weekend, just waited for my gardening companion to come home.

Cicadas and evening light

Growing up in Central Texas, we saw lots of billowing cumulus clouds, often tinted with darker, stormy edges. The sunsets were often spectacular, as the clouds viewed across a long horizon turned orange, gold, and purple.
But here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian range, our views to the east are muted by the escarpment. But in the summer, the high humidity creates a luminous quality in late evening and early morning which I love. And, if there's a possibility of thunderstorms, the cloud towers become tinted with the sunset.

The sounds of cicadas, crickets, and katydids are a summer constant, a bit muted this summer because of drought. But evenings in the Midwestern U.S. and the West are silent in comparison; the nocturnal symphony is something that's ours to appreciate.