"Rise up, Jock and sing your song,
For the summer is short and the winter long.
Let's all join hands and form a chain
Till the leaves of springtime bloom again"
That's a song we console ourselves with in the darkest, coldest time of the year. But here it is, August! It's sunny and warm today, not too hot. The garden is burgeoning, the air is sweet. We are now used to wearing shorts and sandals and stepping out without a jacket.
But here it's just far enough north that suddenly we can feel a change, a subtle stirring in the air. The grasses are turning brown, and the insects sound has a slightly heightened urgency. The crop of beans is almost over, and it's harder to find blueberries on the bushes. Strawberries, those harbingers of high summer, are long gone. There's still plenty of time to party and luxuriate in the greenness, the warmth, the ready supply of fresh fruits and vegetables- but it's also time to prepare the root cellar, to stack the wood, and to put food by for what's coming.
Each golden day of summer has been extra sweet this year, it seems. While much of the rest of the country is baking in a prolonged, overheated drought, we've been blessed with slightly-below-normal temps, one brief heat wave, and day after day of achingly beautiful sunny, green gloriousness. I give thanks for the beauty, the sweetness, the fertile, rich ebb of the wave that is summer, so short, so precious. I will savor each moment as much as I can.
