In August swallows southward fly, summer’s waning, fall is nigh.
~ Tasha Tudor

It’s been awhile since I’ve tended to my blog. My life has been filled with many things lately — both good and not so good. I’m sure everyone can relate to that. It’s left me a bit depleted, like I’ve been constantly operating on a 7% battery. Despite all of that, I’ve still been trying to find peaceful places and beautiful things, watching summer slowly transition to fall, and taking pictures. I’m always taking pictures! So this post is a bit of what I’ve been up to and a little update on my exciting (to me) corn situation.

On a whim, I decided to drive up to an orchard and farm that holds an annual sunflower festival. I wasn’t particularly interested in the festivities—my main goal was simply to walk through a field of one of my favorite botanicals: sunflowers.

Have you ever had the pleasure of strolling through a field of sunflowers on a beautiful September day? If you get the chance, I highly recommend it. Five stars.

You’re not only permitted to wander through the field, but you also get to take a couple of sunflowers home. Normally each ticket comes with the privilege of cutting two flowers, but because it was the last day of the festival, each ticket holder was allowed to cut twelve!

Most of them were the size of dinner plates, so twelve seemed a bit ambitious for me. There were, after all, the logistics of carrying them and then transporting them home to consider. I reconciled myself to seven carefully selected sunflowers.

Beauties, aren’t they? I especially love the texture of the soft golden petals and the crazy, intricate swirling pattern of the developing seeds in the center—total Fibonacci vibes. Sunflowers are so chill — just growing in a field, simultaneously producing nutritious seeds, providing a buffet for honey bees, looking beautiful, and casually showing off their recreational mathematics.

An update on my rogue cornstalk…

For those of you who occasionally read my blog, I recently wrote about the accidental cornstalk that appeared to be happily thriving in the middle of my front walk. I let it grow just to see what would become of it. It defied the odds and challenges of being a self-pollinator and grew two cobs.

I had no idea what variety of corn it was. There were three reasonable possibilities: field corn from the birdseed mix I use, the dried cobs I leave out for squirrels in winter, or the colorful decorative cobs I buy in the fall for my porch.

And now for the big reveal…

It was colorful decorative corn!

Being a single cornstalk, pollination of the cobs was questionable. One literally had two sad little kernels. The other reminded me of a mouthful of randomly missing teeth.

Still, it was pretty cool to accidentally grow decorative corn. I’m now tempted to intentionally grow a little patch next summer.

Once my sad little cobs were harvested, the stalk quickly faded from vibrant green to streaks of green, gold and amber. I thought the leaves looked pretty, so I tried to take pictures.

And that’s when I saw them.

Seriously weird-looking caterpillars that appeared to have escaped from Pokémon world.

I Googled them and discovered that they’re also venomous and can cause a nasty sting and skin reaction. They look all soft, innocent and happy when in fact they’re just pillowy, fuzzy hell ravioli with venomous spikes!

Once they go through metamorphosis, they become nothing more than mediocre brownish-gray moths….who seem to have relocated themselves to my bathroom.

What a development arc. Kind of disappointing, actually.

But I suppose I’m grateful they don’t turn into giant neon-green venomous moths assaulting whoever walks near the porch light at night—which is basically… me.

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