Buon Ferragosto!

 A Short Walk on Ferragosto.....

It doesn't seem like mid-August.  Ferragosto.  The 15th August.  Feriae Augusti, initiated by the Emperor Augustus (when he was merely Octavian) to give workers a break, then adopted by the Pope to combine with the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.  

When I went to live in Rome, in August '76, it was blindingly hot, and around Ferragosto almost everything was closed - shops had their blinds down for weeks, the whole city seemed to be asleep.

I spoke to a friend in Calabria last night.  It was very very hot, but she was planning a family picnic under the trees today.  I remember summer days in Italy, a little lunch then a sleep in the shade.  August was a quiet month.  In fact, many summers I travelled north to escape the mid-summer heat, and later, the fires and the Canadairs, the acrid air......

So today, in the comparative cool of Norfolk, under grey skies, with a hint of drizzle just speckling my camera, I take Amanda for a walk.  And, to my amazement, we find ourselves in early Autumn - far from the glare of summer......

Sloes are darkening; crab apples are swelling in the hedgerows.  There is even a mushroom arising out of a rotten log.....

Beech mast is dropping from the trees, falling and opening.....

Hazelnuts await the squirrels:

Sweet chestnuts are forming on their twigs:

And Blackberries are getting ready for the pie:

Thistle down is whisping in the breeze:

The seeds of Rosebay Willowherb are all set to take off:

And the sticky buds of Burdock are almost past their best:

While the bright berries of the Rowan are ripe and ready to pick to make jelly with the crab-apples:

It's all very well, but only the other day it was Spring, and then yesterday was Summer.  Who knows where the time goes?  

Life is upside down.  A second year begins to fray and decline; a second lost year, with few meetings, little travel, enclosure and isolation.  

Forgive me this, but, "Hare today....

Gone tomorrow....."

Across the evening sky,

all the birds are leaving,

But how can they know,

it's time for them to go?

Before the winter fire,

I will still be dreaming,

I have no thought of time.

For who knows,

where the time goes?

Who knows,

where the time goes?

Sandy Denny

Who Knows Where the Time Goes

1967

https://youtu.be/jsqztvHIB9Y

Buon Ferragosto my friends.....

Make the most of today, for who knows...?

[All photographs taken on the Wild Ken Hill estate, Snettisham, Norfolk, between 08.30 and 10.30 on August 15th, 2021, with my Pentax K-3, mounted with a Pentax - DA 1:2.8 35mm Macro lens (limited)].