I stepped out onto the porch yesterday morning and the air had a clean snap to it, a transparent blue chill that the soft cool haze of summer just lacks.
We've already had a couple of pouring rains; I love lying in the quiet house at night, listening to the drumming of late summer rain on the roof, the rush and gurgle of the gutters draining, the soundless feel of the parched ground soaking up the moisture.
(By late September the joy is gone - the Rains have come to stay and the novelty of a wet evening is spent.)
It's almost time to take in the hammock, to roll the plastic kid pool against the fence.
It's almost time to mulch the garden and cut the remaining roses back hard.
It's almost the End of Summer.
An agitation of the air,A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.
I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones
Amaded, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was forever over.
Already the iron door of the North
Clangs open: birds,leaves,snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.
Stanley Kunitz
6 comments:
Well, Chief, for us here in the SF/Bay-Area down south of you, summer is in full force, and if it rains (which we had a light misting in July) we attribute that to El Nino or Global Warming.
For us, the end of September, beginning of October are the hot days, Indian summer, baking hot, omg hot, the kind of hot where the air conditioning is the only thing preventing the body from seperating into its constituent atomic components and running down the drain.
Winter for us starts late November, early Decemeber...thats when we get that crispness in the air, and the rains probably won't come till mid December-to-January.
I guess thats the price we pay for living in a very, very dry state.
What she said.
I wish it was fall. It's going near 100 here today.
North Carolina (when I lived there) was much the same: autumn didn't really arrive until late October or even early November.
These cool days in August and September are one thing I love about living above the 45th Parallel and east of the Pacific Ocean.
Ask me again in February after four months of rain. I may have a different answer...
Oh yeah, I can tell that summer is dying down. Looking at the weather report and seeing a week with all the projected highs in the 90's, it's practically a cold front. Keep in mind that we've had the hottest summer on record - beating a previous 83 year record, some ungodly fact such as 70 days over 100 degrees.
Jeez, have I officially become old, focusing on the weather?
W: "...beating a previous 83 year record, some ungodly fact such as 70 days over 100 degrees."
Sweetbabyjesus that's hot!
My take on the whole weather thing is it depends on how the weather affects you. I work outside something like 80% of the time, so the weather makes an enormous difference between a delightful day in the outdoors and hot, sweltering misery or hunching against a freezing rain. So, like a farmer, I pay real close attention to the weather.
But almost two solid months of +100? Doesn't matter how much you pay attention to the weather, with those temperatures the weather pays attention to you!
Hope things cool off soon. Ugh - I hate that kind of unrelenting heat.
"Already the iron door of the North
Clangs open: birds,leaves,snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows"
Yea...this about sums up this week here on the North Coast dosen't it?
I followed you over here from Ranger's place...nice blog ya got here.
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