Carbon::now() - only month

$now = Carbon::now();
echo $now->year;
echo $now->month;
echo $now->weekOfYear;

Update:

even this works since Laravel 5.5^

echo now()->month

I think you've already worked this out in a comment, but just for clarity: Carbon extends PHP's native DateTime class, so you can use any of the methods available on that, like format:

Carbon::now()->format('M');

(where M is the modifier for A short textual representation of a month, three letters)

You can use these both ways to get the current month

Carbon::now()->month;

or

Carbon::now()->format('m');