Inner Journeying Through Art-Journaling: Learning to See And Record Your Life As a Work of Art  

"Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?"
-  Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

"Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience.
Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence."
-  Hal Borland

"The summer night is like a perfection of thought."
-  Wallace Stevens  

Lughnasadh, Lammas, Summer Festivals: Extensive Bibliography, Links, Lore, Poems, Prayers, Preparations, Crafts

"Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips,
Faint and grey 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:
Patient and colourless, though Heaven's gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn,
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn,
Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bow'd locks of the corn."
-  William Morris, Summer Dawn

"Pomona was the uniquely Roman goddess of fruit trees, gardens, and orchards, and her festival, which she shared with her husband Vertumnus, was always on August 13th. Pomona watches over and protects fruit trees and cares for their cultivation, and Her name is from the Latin pomum, fruit. "Pomme" is the French word for "apple".  Pomona was among the Numina, guardian spirits of Roman mythology, who watched over people, places, or homes. The Numina are, in essence, the holy spirits of place, from which the word "numinous" derives. Pomona protected and inspired the abundance of the fruitful gardens and orchards. She had her own priest in Rome, called the Flamen Pomonalis. A grove sacred to her was called the Pomonal, located not far from Ostia, the ancient port of Rome."
-  Pomona - Roman Goddess of Agriculture and Abundance

"A life without love is like a year without summer."
-  Swedish Proverb

"The English winter, ending in July
To recommence in August."
-  Lord Byron

"Give me the joys of summer,
Of Summer Queen so fair,
With wealth of lovely flowers
And fruits and sun-kissed air!

Talk not to me of winter
With ice and frost and snow,
Nor changing spring and autumn
When howling winds will blow.

No, I will take the joys
Of Summer every time,
So to this Queen of Seasons
I dedicate my rhyme."
-  Winifred Sackville Stoner, Midsummer Joys

"If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?" 
-  Steven Wright 

"Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens.  There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue.  There were all the obvious things like delphiniums and acronitums and larkspurs, but the most beautiful blue of all came from the groups of cabbages - the ordinary blue pickling cabbage.  Set against the blazing blue of the other flowers, it had a bloom and elegance which made it a thing of the greatest delight."
-  Beverly Nichols 

"When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow, but the gardeners themselves."
-  Ken Druse

"He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers."
-  Jonathan Swift

"A languid atmosphere, a lazy breeze,
With labored respiration, moves the wheat
From distant reaches, till the golden seas
Break in crisp whispers at my feet.

My book, neglected of an idle mind,
Hides for a moment from the eyes of men;
Or lightly opened by a critic wind,
Affrightedly reviews itself again.

Off through the haze that dances in the shine
The warm sun showers in the open glade,
The forest lies, a silhouette design
Dimmed through and through with shade.

A dreamy day; and tranquilly I lie
At anchor from all storms of mental strain;
With absent vision, gazing at the sky,
"Like one that hears it rain.""
-  James Whitcomb Riley, A Summer Afternoon

"This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders."
-  Sarah Orne Jewett, The Courting of Sister Wisby, 1887  

"Under the summer sun,
thirty birds feeding
on figs.
Young tree branches
sagging so low -
ripe peaches.
Still in the shade,
on wet soil,
a black dragonfly.

An old mind
surprised by seeing
a purple fairy at sunset,
dancing to the crickets' tunes,
leaping as guinea hens screech,
wary of the bats,
hovering to say,
"Lugh's Day, Lugh's Day."

Crackling fires
glowing
under the full moon.
Peace in the Valley."
-  Michael Garofalo, Lugh's Day

"One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space."
-  Rachel Carson

"There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart."
-  Celia Thaxter

"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability."
-  Sam Keen

"This is the river of the great 19th-century landscapists; of Cole, Cropsey and Church, and at the end of the summer it lies motionless under the haze as under a light coat of varnish."
-  Judith Thurman 

"Even with insects -
some can sing,
some can't."
-  Kobayashi Issa

"Let me enjoy this late-summer day of my heart while the leaves are still green and I won't look so close as to see that first tint of pale yellow slowly creep in. I will cease endless running and then look to the sky ask the sun to embrace me and then hope she won't tell of tomorrows less long than today. Let me spend just this time in the slow-cooling glow of warm afternoon light and I'd think I will still have the strength for just one more last fling of my heart."
- John Bohrn, Late August

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
- Warren Buffett

"The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco."
-  Mark Twain 

"August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away."
-  Elizabeth Maua Taylor, August  

"A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows."
-  St. Francis of Assisi 

"When summer opens, I see how fast it matures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn."
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson 

"Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.

Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify

Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now."
-  Emily Dickinson, Further in Summer Than the Birds

"Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.
I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-tree trickles on my bare head."
-  Li Po, Summer in the Mountains

" Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?

The men sprawl near the baler,
too tired to leave the field.
They talk and smoke,
and the tips of their cigarettes
blaze like small roses
in the night air. (It arrived
and settled among them
before they were aware.)

The moon comes
to count the bales,
and the dispossessed--
Whip-poor-will, Whip-poor-will
--sings from the dusty stubble.

These things happen. . .the soul's bliss
and suffering are bound together

The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew." 
-  Jane Kenyon, Twilight: After Haying

"Hot town summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city."

"And where have you been, my Mary,
And where you been from me?"
"I've been to the top of the Caldon Low,
The midsummer night to see!"
"And what did you see, my Mary,
All up on the Caldon Low?"
"I saw the glad sunshine come down,
And I saw the merry winds blow."
"And what did you hear, my Mary,
All up on the Caldon Hill?"
"I heard the drops of the water made,
And the ears of the green corn fill."
"Oh! tell me all, my Mary -
All, all that ever you know;
For you must have seen the fairies
Last night on the Caldon Low."
-  Mary Howitt, The Fairies of Caldon Low 

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun 

Secrets to Great Soil (Gardening Skills Illustrated) by Elizabeth Stell 

Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web by Jeff Lowenfels 

Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners by James Nardi 

Soil (True Books: Natural Resources) by Christin Ditchfield 

Soil Science Simplified by Helmut Kohnke 

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan 

"Sometimes I wonder what I'm a-gonna do
'Cause there ain't no cure for the summertime blues."
-  Eddie Cochran   

Astrological Signs:  Leo ,  July 23 - August 22

"Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes."
-  Robert Louis Stevenson, Summer Sun 

"mother’s parasol
I unfold the dust
of other summers"
-  Ernest J. Berry

"The frog half fearful jumps across the path,
And little mouse that leaves its hole at eve
Nimbles with timid dread beneath the swath;
My rustling steps awhile their joys deceive,
Till past,--and then the cricket sings more strong,
And grasshoppers in merry moods still wear
The short night weary with their fretting song.
Up from behind the molehill jumps the hare,
Cheat of his chosen bed, and from the bank
The yellowhammer flutters in short fears
From off its nest hid in the grasses rank,
And drops again when no more noise it hears.
Thus nature's human link and endless thrall,
Proud man, still seems the enemy of all."
-  John Clare, Summer Evening, 1848

"'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight,
All soft and still and fair;
The solemn hour of midnight
Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,

But most where trees are sending
Their breezy boughs on high,
Or stooping low are lending
A shelter from the sky.

And there in those wild bowers
A lovely form is laid;
Green grass and dew-steeped flowers
Wave gently round her head."
-  Emily Bronte, Moonlight, Summer Moonlight

"We are all flowers in the garden of the world.
Some of us are daisys dainty and bright.
Some of us are poppys,with sweet contagious laughter.
If there was a flower for you,
Youd be a wild orchid,
So full of life,colors alive,
Sprinkled with scarlett and purple,
Explosions of colors racing through your petals."
-  Lanie Costea, A Wild Orchid