In the corner of one of our little garden areas, we have left a thistle that has grown tall and multi-branched to a height four feet beyond the six-foot fence where our huskies are kennelled.
This was left with a reason, as it blooms and fluffs out its seed heads along about mid-August and can be seen from where we sit most evenings watching the sun go down.
Because of their non-migratory habits, this is the time of year that the tiny yellow goldfinches start to nest. It is fun to sit and watch them gather their mouths full of fluff with which they line their nests. The seed of the thistle is known to be high in protein with which they feed their fast-growing young.
This past year, they decided to cheat a little. Periodically, the little female will fly down to the ground and pick up a mouthful of our dog Foxy’s cream-coloured hair, as she is shedding her winter coat, often rolling on the ground to do so near where the thistle is located.
Goldfinches build a tiny cup-shaped nest either in a low shrub or out on an extended limb of a maple. They weave these cups so tightly that I have often found their abandoned nests full of water after a heavy shower. If mom is not around to shelter both eggs and young with her outspread wings, it is usually a fatal situation.
I enjoy watching these little fellows as they go about doing their thing, but with it, too, I realize that summer has gone.
The robins no longer hop across the lawn, looking for worms. The swallows have left the barn in search of flies in other locations, and the bluebirds have switched diets from insects to fruit and have departed, though visiting often, to more fruitful feeding grounds.
This past week, I took a slow tour around the back reaches of our farm, and there among the forest trees and hedgerows is an overabundance of fruit this year. The weighted branches of the pagoda dogwood, wild plum, chokecherry, high bush cranberry, elderberry, both black and red raspberry, wild grapes, and Virginia creeper vines are loaded.
The wild apple trees are heavily loaded as well, and you can see in the long grass where the deer have bedded down to rest and munch in their shade. High on the hillside bush of a neighbour, where oak and beech trees grow at random, I could hear the clucking call of a hen turkey as she assured her flock of feeding young that all was well.
As the sun began setting in the west, the wind dropped, and our second-cut drying hay, waiting in long tedded rows to be baled on the morrow, filled the air with a tender sweetness that words could never describe.
Meanwhile a huge harvest moon rose, full faced, quickly and quietly up over the heavily treed woodlot just beyond our eastern corner. I’m sure “It was looking back to see if I was looking back to see if it was looking back to see” what the heck I was doing.
With such a watchful eye, life can be really tough here on the farm, don’t you think?
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105