Half of me is ready for Christmas already, but the other half of me isn't done with summer yet.  Typically, we're all in the "Come back!" type of mood when the first gaggles of geese start flying over.  But the other day, some geese landed in their field - they're all getting ready to fly south, and when they fly south they drag winter in right on their tails.
     Anyway, we were having supper on the evening of the 23rd and somebody yelled "Noooo!" as a bunch of geese flew over.  Then a minute later: "Hey, they're landing in our field!"
     The camera came out at that point.

Last night on our way outside to finish packaging produce, I saw the sun rays shining out of the top of the clouds and couldn't resist snapping a quick picture.

This morning when I got up, it was really foggy outside.  (Seems like another thing that happens more towards the end of summer, but maybe I'm just looking for signs of fall.)
     Later in the morning, I was informed that there were a bunch of neat-looking spiderwebs built between fence rails around the animal pens, so I headed over to check it out.  While I was there, our biggest turkey was trying to act all big and impressive (and I'll admit that he is awfully pretty, especially when he puffs himself up).  By the time he turned towards me for that photo, he'd mostly settled his feathers, but he'd attracted one of the females over.

All righty, here comes the next batch.  After going through all my photos from the past week, I decided on pictures from only two days... but there's still quite a few.
     August 12th.  I was going on a photography "expedition", and Tikka came with me.  Then, when I got to the east end of the wheat field and looked up at the sun, I thought it was lined up perfectly with the wheat heads.

And yesterday evening's photos have a bit of a story behind them.  Just as we were finishing supper, somebody looked out the window and remarked on how neat the sky looked.  I took a couple of pictures and put my camera away.
     A short while after that, my brother came inside and asked if I wanted to take his place mowing the backyard.  I'll take any chance I get to mow - it's one of my favourite jobs - so I said yes and went outside.
     I'd done a few passes and was watching the sky every time I swung around the face the northwest.  The sky kept changing and the sun rays were shining in every direction, and the colours were so pretty.  Every time I turned to face that direction, the sky had changed a bit more and was even prettier than before.
     (A side-note to anyone who likes to mow straight lines across the yard - don't try watching a sunset and mowing at the same time.  Either stop the mower or forget having straight lines :D)
     I finally shut the mower off and went tearing up to the house to get my camera.  I came back, took a bunch of pictures, and then turned the mower back on and kept mowing.
     Except . . . the sky kept changing and I kept wanting to take more pictures, so I kept stopping the mower and picking my camera up again.
     I don't know how long this went on for before I just stopped the mower where I could see the whole sky, shut the machine off, and sat there watching the sunset.  I took a lot more pictures before the sun finally disappeared completely behind some storm clouds off in the distance, and then I finally was able to finish mowing.
     That story told, here are some of the best pictures I got of that gorgeous sky last night!  God's handiwork is so amazing!

Okay no, not all of them are poppy photos.  (6 of 10 are.)  But I've been snapping pictures left and right of my only poppies that bloomed this year, so gear up for some photos ;)
    Poppies on the 5th and the 8th:

Then, probably my favourite flower photo so far this year, a morning glory.  I've planted morning glories before, but they never blossomed.  This is the first one I've had that's blossomed, so I was really happy to see this.  It was especially pretty because it had just rained, so there were still tiny droplets of water all over the petals.
     The other picture is a small bouquet of flowers my sister picked.  I put the vase on the deck to use the boards as a background, but it had started raining a little bit already so the boards were sprinkled with water.  (Both these pictures were taken on the 8th.)

Another poppy photo from the morning of the 9th (the sun was shining right through the petals, which looked super neat), and also a picture of the very odd-looking storm clouds that went over us that evening.  The farther they went, the more they looked like a shelf.

And finally, three poppy pictures I took this morning.  (A lot of them are bending over because Tikka keeps playing down there and running through the flowers.)

Well, I've got nineteen pictures I'm going to share, so this may take a little while!
     First, from July 24th.  Early that morning (around 2am), we'd all been jarred by an incredible thunderclap.  (Most thunderclaps roll.  This one was so loud, the result of such a close bolt of lightning, that it sounded like a single bomb explosion.)
     I think we all figured that the lightning must have struck something pretty close to the house for the thunder to have been so violently loud, so later that morning my brother and I went out to see.
     Somehow I walked right past this tree (probably because I was distracted with trying to keep Tikka from chasing a robin), but a short while later Jonathan called me back and showed it to me.  The lightning bolt had send splinters of wood flying in all directions, and some of the splinters had burn marks on them.
     (Lower left photo:  In the evening of that day, the sun was shining on some puffy clouds in the east and I thought it looked neat.)

a storm was starting to roll in.  We could see the other side already, and the different clouds with the sun shining around them was amazing.

On July 27th, the sun rays appeared to be laying across some clouds instead of shining through them, giving them an odd appearance.  It almost looked like water in the ocean or something.

Three from July 29th.  The first one is the sunset, and the other two are of my chicks (well, they're not really chicks anymore but I still think of them as such).  I still think Rocky is a cockerel and Tasha is  pullet, but I'm still not 100% sure.  Anyway, the quality of the first picture isn't great because the sun was starting to go down when I took it.  The one of them roosting is a bit better - except that Rocky had to be staring straight at the camera and he looks kind of creepy.

They've both turned into quite pretty young chickens, especially Tasha.  Lilly (I changed Neve's name to Lilly because her original name kept getting pronounced wrong) is trying to go broody again, but she's been sitting on an empty nest - like she did the first time - and anyway, we have the roosters in a separate pen right now so the eggs wouldn't hatch even if she was sitting on them.  As of right now, we keep throwing her off the nest.  But I'm planning to keep her over this winter and see if she'll hatch some more babies for me in the spring.
     Okay!  The rest of these pictures all all from August 1st. 

Bachelor's buttons and baby's breath and a California poppy, all from the flower rows my sisters and I planted a while ago.  The plum tree, two half-ripe apples, an unripe pear, and the sun shining behind the spruce tree that morning.

And finally, my favourite flower.  Wild roses are still a favourite of mine as well, especially since they have a scent that compares to no other flower, but the Flanders poppy (I believe is also known as the common poppy) is my favourite blossom.  I plant poppies every year but this year the ones I planted from saved seed never came up.  I planted some in a different location with different seed, and these ones came up.  The first one opened on July 31st, I think, and I took this first picture on August 1st.

I hope you enjoyed these photos!

It's been a busy week with quite a bit of harvesting going on, but I've finally managed to get this post up.  Today I'm just going to do the July photo... hopefully tomorrow I'll manage to pull off a photo dump, because I have a lot of photos I want to share!
     For now, here's a picture I took on the evening of July 29th - the moon was almost full, there was a clear sky, and everything lined up perfectly.