August is...

"August is the year at early harvest, a farm wife with a baby napping in the crib, a preserving kettle on the stove, fryers in the freezer, new potatoes in the pot, and a husband in the hayfield baling the second cutting. August is tomatoes ripening and the insistent note of the cicada punctuating the heat of midafternoon. August is the smell of corn pollen, and the taste of roasting ears, and the stain of blackberry juice on the fingers.

August is the flame of phlox in the dooryard and hollyhocks down by the roadside blooming now up at their tips. August is Summer squash by the bushel, and Winter squash swelling beneath the broad parasol of trailing leaves. August is ripe oats. August is a languid river and a springhouse brook reduced to a trickle.

August is a few impatient asters trying to compete with late daisies; it is daylilies all through blooming and looking ragged and outworn; it is the first sprays of goldenrod in the uncut fence row. August is baby rabbits almost grown, and pilfering in the garden; it is fledglings all feathered and on the wing; it is a cow, her Spring calf forgotten, chewing a leisurely cud in the shade of a tired elm tree at the side of the meadow.

August is the heavy grapes in the vineyard, and the lacy leaf where the Japanese beetle feasted in metallic glitter; it is wild grapes festooned on the trees at the riverbank; it is algae on the pond and the fat green thumbs of cattails in the swamp, and ironweed purpling, and vervain in full bloom. August is a hastening sun, earlier to bed and later to rise. August is Summer thinking of the cut and color of her Autumn costume." - Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964