In A Field Of Suns ...

“ Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It’s what the sunflowers do.”

             ~ Helen Keller

              ~ 1880 ~ 1968

Though the sun often dipped behind the clouds on this late August afternoon, the field of sunflowers shone their beauty like little suns in the Sunflower Garden of St. Luke’s Hospital, Anderson Campus, Easton, Pennsylvania.

 

A bee decided to buzz in and photobomb this shot, landing on the sunflower in the foreground.

 

Young sunflowers move to face the sun, a movement called heliotropism. Mature sunflowers generally stop moving and remain facing East, which lets them be warmed by the rising sun.

 

The sunflower (or “soniashnyk”) is Ukraine’s national flower and has been grown on its central and eastern steppes since the middle of the 18^th century. And today, in light of Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, the sunflower is a symbol of “I Stand With Ukraine!”

 

St. Luke’s also has a Cosmos Field filled with their colorful, daisy-like blooms, as cosmos are related to sunflowers and daisies.

 

Velvet Twilight ...

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

         ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

                     ~ 1749 ~ 1842

Nestled in the milkweed, a majestic yearling ~ a nine-point buck ~ shows off his velvet antlers as a summer twilight falls across Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania, on a beautiful late July evening.

 

The Fawns Of August ...

 “… I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief …

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

  ~ “The Peace of Wild Things”

 ~ Wendell Berry

 ~ born 1934

 ~ American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic & farmer

 I came into the peace of wild things when I spotted the sweetest sight of summer ~ two beautiful white-tailed deer fawns, twice the joy of seeing just one! ~ showing affection and enjoying their first summer on an early August evening along the Ironton Rail Trail, which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania.

The Ironton Railroad was a shortline railroad in Lehigh County. Originally built in 1861 to haul iron ore and limestone to blast furnaces along the Lehigh River, traffic later shifted to carrying Portland Cement when local iron mining declined in the early 20^th century. Much of the railroad had already been abandoned when it became part of Conrail in 1976, and the last of its trackage was removed in 1984.

In 1996, Whitehall Township purchased 9.2 miles of the right-of-way from Conrail, transforming it into the Ironton Rail Trail.