A reminder – this is the time of the Perseid meteor show. The event peaks between August 12 and 14.

Lots of interesting tidbits and hints in the August entries of The Farmers’ Almanac. I found these in the 2011 and 2012 editions of the Engagement Calendars. Enjoy!

 The heat beats down. My soul is groaning, ready for a change of temperature.Surely, it will come soon.

Here’s a positive summer thought by Ivan Turgenev, in his Sketches from a Hunter’s Album. “It was a beautiful July day, one of those days which occur only when the weather has been unchanged
for a long time.”

I guess that’s it. The weather has been unchanged. The bright sun beems down. The wilting green leaves of the oak trees are now tinged with yellow, the earth is parched and cracking, …

My first kayaking experience in an ‘urban’ lake – a Saturday morning float on Lake Lady Bird Johnson just south of
downtown Austin, TX. Created by the second of two Texas dams on the Colorado River, as it flows through south central Texas (the first dam creates Lake Travis), Lake Lady Bird offers tranquil
waters and an amazing view of the Austin skyline.

The Austin Rowing Club was practicing hard at both …

One of the very best things about summer, to me, is fresh tomatoes! I love their juiciness, their flavor, their texture . . . everything about them –
especially when they are fresh from a garden! (Hot house tomatoes just aren’t the same –) I think that garden soil flavors tomatoes, adding to their richness. About once a week in summer, I
CRAVE a BLT – and the very best part is the tomato.
…

(Thanks to David Sobel – who first got me thinking about Mapmaking with his book, Mapmaking With Children: Sense of
Place Education for the Elementary Years. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH. 1998.)

Have you ever made a map? It could be a map to your house, a map to your school, a map to a park – or even a treasure map! Chances are it wasn’t much more than a line on a piece of paper winding
between …

Summer. Long hot days, short warm nights. There’s no denying what we’re experiencing now, especially in the center of the country where the
BIG H hovers on the televised weather maps. Inside days, these are days to read a good book, go to a museum or a library,  or visit the aquarium.

Today’s blog piece features some interesting things about three seemingly ordinary members of the animal kingdom. These are animals that I have all seen today – maybe you …

The year’s natural happenings continue this month – in spite of heat or wind or drought. Here’s a list of some of the things happening in the skies
and on the planet during the coming weeks. (Thanks again to Chris Hardman’s Ecological Calendar for this fun compilation to share with you!)

In the Skies
MercuryLeavesEvenings – Mercury exits the evening sky on July 21, and:
MercuryJoins VenusJupiterMornings – Mercury joins the morning sky on August 6.
…

Beautiful calendars often come in the mail –  I’m already receiving calendars for 2013 although it is still more than five months away!

I don’t have enough walls to hang all the calendars sent by nonprofit organizations. Greeting cards are often the other thing I randomly receive. Here’s a couple of ideas for something you can
do with them. These are great projects for parents or grandparents to do with kids on summer days when it’s just too hot to go outside, or if (miracle of …

Mid-July. In my part of the world (northeastern Oklahoma) I can find little to like about mid-summer.
The list of what I don’t like is long: heat, humidity, mosquitoes, heat, humidity, mosquitoes, heat, humidity, mosquitoes, heat, humidity … Okay. So the list isn’t all that long, but it seems
endless when it is repeated day after day after day.

Today I am meditating on something that John A. Murray says in The Quotable Nature Lover, The Nature Conservancy:Lyons Press, 1999. The quote …