We have acres of milkweed in our pastures and woods. Great for monarch butterflies.

I have been searching all summer for a caterpillar or chrysalis, the pupa form, but with no luck.

So I resigned myself to taking photos of interesting milkweed pods, some of them smaller this year because of the drought.

And then I saw one! A monarch caterpillar in all its glory!

Can you tell which is the head end and which is the tail end?

I went for a walk in the pasture as it was getting dark.

There was a skeleton of a long-dead hawthorn tree.

When I turned around, the crescent moon was sinking in the west.

Later, much later, I sat under the night sky with a blanket wrapped around me, enjoying the constellations, shooting stars, the coyotes’ serenade, until the cloud cover spoiled it all and I went inside.

Here in the southeast corner of Manitoba, we are having a very dry summer.

The wild bergamot flower, like many of the wildflowers in the woods and pastures, is not as lush as other years, seeming to dry up before it is in full bloom.

The wild plum, while possibly drying up from other causes than the drought, since there is a plump green plum behind it, is just a symbolic visual of the unseasonable dry hot summer.