Still summer?

Autumn tried to sneak in this weekend....But summer fought back and won, treating us to yet another hot, very hot! and sunny weekend.

My prairie girl heart was longing for harvest and golden fields.

Apples and frost and crisp nights with starry skies. Summer laughed at my fantasy...and "the boys" went surfing....

I stopped by the wetlands bird sanctuary, looking for migratory songbirds...and was instead presented with an emerald green high summer marsh....

This is what lies behind the field, in first picture, above!

But there's a secret garden here!

Someone, for some wonderful but unfathomable reason, decided to plant a prairie-style high grass meadow  between the parking lot and the berm that allows us to see the marsh safely.

I'm pretty sure that a meadow is ecologically incorrect for a barrier beach island---which is truly just a sandbar with sparse vegetation at most.

Perhaps on the mainland, 100 years ago?

Before malls and highways and golf courses took over?

                    

Plenty of food for the migratory songbirds if and when they pass through...

Wild grapes....

below: Colorful! We called this joe-pye weed back in Illinois, no clue what it really is. I do remember that the berries made great ink for secret messages! [a/n This weed is actually called pokeweed. It is---unsurprisingly---related to another weed called INKWEED. Both used by colonists to make, well, ink!]

and scented grey bayberries, ingdigenous to the dunes here....

But---whyever this secret prairie meadow exists here and now---

...I treasure it!

love

    lizzy

gone to the beach.....