today in july

The sun it hot,
for July is here,
haymaking time
in the fields.
Now is the time
when
cabbages grow,
the spinach
and cress,
the lettuce and onions and leeks.

Now is the time
when each day
I go to the pump
with my
watering-can
and water and water
the rows.
The poppies glow red,
tiger-lillies gold,
the grasses are tall and straight.

But July is here
and
THUNDER in the air.

-from Around the Year, a picture book by Elsa Beskow, one of our favorites and a must for reading to children to help them develop a sense of a year's rhythm.