More summer stuff.

Pre-season football has begun, college students are packing up for school, a lot of county fairs and carnivals have moved on leaving only a whiff of fried dough and corn dogs, but summer isn't over, not by a long shot. Here are some photos to help you keep thinking those summery thoughts. 

Below we have a slightly blurry frog. It was taken in rather a hurry because the baby dog, Nipper, wanted to make friends with it. As that might have resulted in catastrophic injury to the frog, I figured we'd best move on quickly. Strange that this frog was sitting in short grass, as in the summer the reptile population generally must stick to the tall stuff. 

It's been so wet this summer (as I've complained again and again) that the frog was just as comfy in the short grass, at least until we came along. I met a snake a couple of days later in a similar lawn spot, but he slunk away before I get the phone out, sly chap.

Here's a... oh, I don't know. Pretty.

The bird shot below is actually a few weeks old, but what summer picture group is complete without a fat li'l robin? Honestly, the robins around here are so fat, if Robin had been like one of these, Batman would have started him on Weight Watchers before he started the anti-crime training.

Here's an early fall leaf, one I think that may have been affected by the mold problem I mentioned a few weeks back. All I can say is, if Jimi Hendrix used a leaf motif for an album cover, he would have started with this one.

Finally, what would July be without this display in your local supermarket?

Yes, a friend who knows how ballistic I get about early seasonal candy wanted me to know that the Halloween candy was up on July 29 in our local supermarket. What kills me is that, aside from horrible candy corn and circus peanuts, not a single one of these sacks of candy is unavailable in non-Halloween form. You can get packs of bite-size Milky Way, M&M's, Reese's, all of them year-round. But no, some people I guess will only buy holiday-themed candy. Maybe they think there's no calories in them. 

Anyway, I guess as long as there's Halloween-themed candy it's still summer, right? If it were autumn we'd have Christmas candy. One day they'll get too far ahead and give us Easter candy in summer, and it'll look like leftovers. Then we'll get the last laugh! Ha ha!