Can't be doing with hot...especially the horrid sultry evenings we've been having for the past few days.
What makes it worse is that we have to keep the windows and doors firmly shut otherwise Molly and Murphy would escape into the wide blue yonder...
The sitting-room window is the worst 'cos there's honey-suckle growing round it which is full of bees in the daytime and moths at night. They sit side by side patting the glass...reaching up with long skinny arms to try to reach an elusive bumble bee...
The evenings bring out fat furry moths who blunder headlong towards the light...so having the window open simply isn't an option. Until the cats have been put to bed in the bathroom that is...then I fling it open and heave a sigh of relief at the cooler air.
Mind you I can't be doing with cold either...I shiver and shake and whinge because the hottie bottle has lost its heat and ask if there are anymore blankets and could Himself possibly get me a cardigan and a hot chocolate would be good actually, seeing as how he's already on his feet...still have the window open at night though, even if there's a sharp frost.
Last night was pretty horrible...really muggy and overcast and I found myself wishing it would rain...which it did all day today.
August is a funny sort of a month...the weather is variable and the country-side has reached the stage of almost an over-growth of vegetation...like Earths last effort before the Autumn sets in.
The fields are waist high in Meadowsweet...tall spikes of white flowers carrying a sweet slightly sickly scent...the roots are, and were, highly prized as a source of a reliable black dye, though I've never tried it. There is an abundance of Purple Loosestrife growing on the bog road with clumps of the yellow variety out in many cottage gardens...
Children are restless now...surrounded everywhere they go by Back To School bargains, be it lunchboxes or copy books...five for €2...new shoes and a pencil case. Torn between meeting up with all their friends again, but conscious of the peer need to say 'yuck...school next week'.
August is the odd month...too far away from Christmas, if that is the way you are inclined...it sits there in the calendar not quite knowing what to do with itself...too early for the Blackberry harvest...too late for the Gooseberries. The harvest has ended...silage cut and baled and stored in the corners of fields...hay is in the barns and turf in sheds, handy for the back door...fat spring lambs are ready for slaughter and cows have finished calving for this year...
There are dog shows in the villages and Donkey races...prizes handed over for the best bunch of roses and the dog most like its owner...cakes are baked and tasted...homemade butter scrutinised by stern judges. Soda bread sniffed and appraised...jars of honey gathered from bee-hives on heather covered mountain-sides...enormous marrows to be stuffed with minced meat and fresh parsley...
We once won a cup at such a show for the best Duck eggs...I was more pleased than if we'd won the Lotto...
August can't quite make up her mind...does she revel in the summer past or look forward to the coming year...sacrifices no longer take place...blood isn't spilt on cornfields to appease the ancient gods...there are no Wicker Men to be rolled ablaze down a hillside, nor is a feted young man, fed on sweet cakes and honey, led willingly to a terrible death on a remote bog.
But still...August is a wicked month.
