Posted by: @stargazer

The sky is a sort of milky color by day, with an orange sun; by night the Moon is dimmed and most of the stars are washed out. ....

The sun is setting about 25 minutes earlier than it did at the June solstice, and we've lost even more daylight in the morning. ....

 

But at night the crickets are singing more loudly and constantly, a sign I recognize as heralding the change to fall.

Yes! The past few days, the morning lighting, in particular, has been very strange with the wildfire smoke. It quite reminded us of partial eclipse lighting. Eerie in some ways.

Here, too, we are really noticing the change in daytime length, heralding the shorter days/ longer nights to come!  

And the crickets, are they loud! What a pretty sound. We often have a few that somehow make their way into our basement (which we try to catch to release outside) ... what a pretty 'noise'.

Well, we are currently having our typical July weather now in August. We are in the midst of a long hot, humid, dry spell of approx. two weeks duration. The only thing to do is to grin and bear it. And pace oneself, drinking lots of water and eating the abundant of fresh fruit and berries available so readily at this time of year. 

Our harvest has begun in our own veggie gardens, with abundant beans (mainly green, but some yellow too), cherry tomatoes, and garlic (just harvested yesterday). In July, 'though hot, we had rain periodically, which made the gardens lush and flourishing. Now, we are reaping (literally) the benefits of this. However, these two weeks in August now, we are needing to manually water the many gardens, as nothing significant will be falling from the sky anytime soon. 

Come, September/Autumn, come!