"Summer's lease hath all too short a date." - William Shakespeare

"Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?"
-  Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

August has, for me, a hurry-up-ness about it. It reminds me that what has been is coming to an end. Time begins to matter more. I always wish I could begin June again - to have one more chance at summer before it disappears.

"Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day."
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not Yet!

"There is but one way to celebrate a plump ripe plum - polish it on your shirt sleeve, see your face in the silvery black shine then open wide, lock your lips on the skin, sink your teeth into the sensuous center suck in the flesh, slurp up the juices.  Ah! The purple of it all."
-  James Ciletti, Ode to a Ripe Plum

 "When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue."
-  Mary Oliver, August

"August, the eighth month of the current Gregorian calendar and the third month of Summer’s rule, derives its name from Augustus (Augustus Caesar).  The traditional birthstone amulets of August are the peridot and the sardonyx; and the gladiolus and the poppy are the month’s traditional flowers.  August is shared by the astrological signs of Leo the Lion and Virgo the Virgin, and is sacred to the following Pagan deities: Ceres, the Corn Mother, Demeter, John Barleycorn, Lugh, and all goddesses who preside over agriculture.  During the month of August, the Great Solar Wheel of the Year is turned to Lammas, one of the four Grand Sabbats celebrated each year by Wiccans and modern Witches throughout the world."
-  Secrets of a Witch

August is famous for a lot of other things as well. Here are just a few.

August is:                                                                          

National Catfish Month!

National Goat Cheese Month              

National Sandwich Month

National Inventors Month!

National Peach Month

National Panini Month

National Dessert Month

National Picnic Month                                     

National Eye Exam Month             

National Sweet Potato Month!

National Breastfeeding Month!   

National Golf Month

National Water Quality Month

National Pet Month

National Breastfeeding Awareness Month

National Candy Month

Each spring I long for summer . . . .until it finally arrives and I immediately remember how much I hate hot weather!

Summer has set in with its usual severity.  

~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"What dreadful hot weather we have!
It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance."
-  Jane Austen  

"If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?"
-  Steven Wright 

 Then there's the nostalgia factor,

”I bet deep down you still wish your mom would take you clothes shopping every August for the new school year.”

Bridget Willard

. . . . . and the righteous factor!

"It will not always be summer: build barns!"
-  Hesiod 

 I don't know who Hesiod was, but, wise as this directive may be, I am most certainly not going to be building any barns . . . not in this heat! And especially not because some guy from antiquity is yelling about it! I much prefer this guy's focus:

"He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers."
-  Jonathan Swift

Now there's a guy who's thinking with all his engines!
Ah, the purple of it all! 
Happy August, and . . . . . . 

 "See you in September!"