Mid August in Michigan is summer with a breath of autumn in it. Our weather has been cooler than usual this summer – tomatoes are still rolling in, but more slowly than usual; the squash seem unaffected. I cook them together, with onion and bacon, then mix it into spaghetti. Yum.

Out on the deck, this is the first time my nasturtiums have exploded like this, keeping the marigolds company in splendor. Is it the weather? It’s been more like spring than summer, which is especially strange compared with how hot it is elsewhere across the country.

Bugs, sadly,, are flourishing in my yard. The Japanese beetles are easy to spot, pick off, and drown in a dish of soapy water, but whatever the crickety chewers are, I never find them. Only the damage they’ve done, curse them. Have they increased because of the weather, or is it that the new fox family has cut back on the bird population? I won’t spray insecticides, out of concern for the bees. The bees are crazy about my zinnias, and ecstatic about the large-leafed mountain mint in the front yard, that blooms from now till frost. Bees can be a little hard to see in photos – there are two in this picture – but in real life the whole mountain mint patch is a blur of dozens of them. Busy doesn’t tell the half of it.

Meanwhile, the deer were eating my rudbeckia in the front yard, so I planted some inside the fenced garden. So of course now they’re leaving the ones out front alone. Well, if that’s what it takes… I saw an eight point buck under the crabapple tree yesterday, but that’s okay if the deer eat the crabapples. Keeps them out of the flowerbeds. I still resent it, though, that with all the bucks tromping through my yard, rubbing bark off the trees and decimating the hydrangeas, not one has had the courtesy to drop his antlers in my yard.

The buck had left when I went outside with my camera. Beside the front door the ceratostigma has begun to flower, but overhead the leaves of the weeping cherry have started to turn and fall. The front path and the driveway are edged with blue and maize. Football season can’t be far behind.