Some Summer Days in Iowa by Frederick John Lazell

When the wild plums ripen in the thicket by the creek and the grapes are purpling in the kisses of the sun; when even the sunlight itself grows mellow and the landscape wears a dreamy haze, colored like the bloom on a plum, as if the year, too, had reached perfect ripeness; then it is mid-September and Iowa begins a season of loveliness which shall hardly be excelled anywhere on earth.

Young birds imitate the spring songs of their parents in a faint, wistful, reminiscent way, some of those hatched early in the year rising almost to full song, as in the case of the meadow larks whose music rings through the meadows and makes the balmy afternoons seem like those of early May. The wild strawberry blossoms again; the violet and some of the other spring flowers. But the signs of the passing of the summer are everywhere in evidence. Dense, white morning mists -- the September mists -- lie in the valleys and yield but slowly to the shafts of the rising sun. Flocks of feathered voyagers are shaping their course toward the south. Gold and crimson leaves grow more numerous along the lanes and in the woods. Antares, Altair and Vega, with the summer constellations, are passing farther towards the west, while before bedtime Fomalhaut may be seen at the mouth of the Southern Fish in the southeast and the creamy white Capella is leading up Auriga in the northeast. Between them, just over the eastern rim of the world, appear the Pleiades, their "sweet influences" in keeping with the season. The summer is passing, but not in sadness. Some of the greatest of its glories are reserved for these last days.