The Four Musketeers ...

“My heart is like a singing bird.”

                     ~ Christina Rossetti

                                ~ 1830-1894

Four precious young barn swallows peek over their nest in a barn at Lehigh Parkway, Allentown, Pennsylvania on an August afternoon.

The barn swallow is a bird of open country that normally uses man-made structures to breed. It builds a cup nest from mud pellets in barns or similar structures.

An Early Fall ...

“And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.”

                                   ~ Oscar Wilde

                                          ~ 1854-1900

Beautiful goldenrod sways in the gentle late August breeze, a sure sign of an early fall along the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (D&L Trail) at Lehigh Gap on a waning summer afternoon.

In the shadow of the Kittatinny Ridge, also called Blue Mountain, the Lehigh Gap in Slatington, Pennsylvania, is a crossroads where the Lehigh Gap Nature Center’s trails connect two historic trails – the Appalachian Trail and the D&L Trail. 

The Appalachian Trail, a foot path, follows the ridge on both sides of the Lehigh Gap, running 1,245 miles south to Georgia and 930 miles north to Maine. Running from Wilkes-Barre to Bristol, the D&L Trail passes through the Lehigh and Delaware rivers and their canals in Pennsylvania.

Goldenrod is the state flower of Kentucky (adopted 1926) and Nebraska (adopted 1895) and was recently named the state wildflower of South Carolina.

Summer Velvet ...

“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”

                 ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

                                 ~ 1749-1842

The afternoon light dances on the velvet antlers of this majestic yearling on an August day at Lehigh Parkway, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

I was happily surprised to see this young white-tailed deer buck so early in the day, as he posed for a few photos before continuing to follow a beautiful doe down the summer path.