On the first day of September, a light rain began falling.
Welcome as any April shower after a hard winter. Only today the shower comes after a long , hard summer. Ninety days of ninety degree daily heat. I’m not sad to say good-bye August!
Time was when I personally welcomed baking dry heat, frying and browning up on the beaches of Provincetown, or grilling on the sands of Agadir, Essouira, Tangiers.
But no more. We know too much about skin cancer, holes in the ozone, plastering on sunscreen or just staying indoors. I’ve found that as I notice aging skin more sensitive to the rays, I’ve taken the best advice the Spaniards have to offer during the hot parts of the day: siesta!
Let the sun do its worst, baking lawn grass to shredded wheat, shriveling my tomatoes and pumpkins to pitiful mockeries of an excuse for a garden. I definitely don’t have a green thumb, don’t leave me in charge of your kitchen garden!
There did seem to be a change after August 15, a pivotal summer date in some lands near the sea, when great tides arrive around the time of the Catholic feast of the Assumption. Although here far from the shore, no moon-driven seas reach our deck, but instead the tide of an early nighthawk migration wave winged down, sweeping the evening skies, southern bound. Hundreds of feet up, kettles of hundreds of these birds circled and dove, getting an early start before the threat of an early frost catches them in the wrong hemisphere. They drifted south, then changed their minds and headed north again, toying with the seasons and our frame of mind.
Now again today, gentle rains edge us into the distant October promise of an Indian Summer, or at least a September pause between seasons. The rose-breasted grosbeak in eclipse plumage shelters under the tangle of wisteria and trumpet vines at the edge of the porch, the wren bathes briskly under channeled rain running down the center of a morning glory leaf.
RiverStoriesDavidBrule 