Here comes the Indian summer. On the 19th, the Christian feast of Transfiguration (a.k.a. Spas, marking the end of summer in a folk calendar), there was a heavy shower, and after it Klavka and I were walking in a park near the forest, a few blocks from our house. A socker field was covered with fog, it looked exactly as the fog is often described: like milk poured on the ground. It seemed to be opaque, Klavka wanted to enter it, and the deeper we went, the farther the fog moved.
Finally I've borrowed a field guide to insects and spiders, but even without it a few days ago I've recognised a big praying mantis in a hand of a guy walking towards me. He found the creature on a shop window (that day there was a strong wind, so the mantis was blown there rather than came itself) and wanted to put it somewhere on a grass. Klavka wanted the insect to crawl into her hand, but I suggested not to disturb them (the guy and the mantis ).
In the book I've found other insects: mud-dauber wasp (flying around), leafhoppers (falling on us from trees), and ornate tiger moth (lives from Great Basin to Pacific Coast, however seen in the forest - or that was its close relative).
Red cardinals became seen more often, and Canadian geese gather on a socker field behid the high school on Main Street.