Progression

Sass wakes me at 5:45 a.m. with her insistent feline strategies—mewing, flicking items off the bedside table and walking across my back. The fan is still running at the end of one of the hottest days and nights of summer, this season that has begun its slow fade as fall creeps subtly forward.

I rise, perform the morning coffee ritual and get to reading, sifting for a spark to ignite my writing. If it doesn’t happen here, I will encounter it along the trails I’ll take through these days passing so swiftly.

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, summer’s dog days ended on August 11. The Full Sturgeon Moon mounted evening’s darkening stage on the 19th. The next full moon to light our meadows, marshes and forests will be called Harvest. It will stir the eels in our riverbeds and beckon to them to begin their migration.

Although I don’t move off to warmer places when the days begin to shorten, I do prepare for change. I’ve been hauling and stacking the load of wood which will ease winter’s icy invasion.

While I was engaged in this fortifying chore, a pair of hummingbirds chased one another overhead, then settled into the willowy arms of the apple tree to observe me. It won’t be long before these fairy birds move on to fairer climes, leaving us only the memory of their hovering forms as they dappled through our gardens sipping nectar from flowers.

The leaves of the evening primrose have started to resemble flames. I’ve gone picking blueberries at a local farm and found it to be slow work. This late in the season, it took longer to collect my cache, but I enjoyed the young child prattling nearby, plying her “Mom-Mom” with repeated entreaties to pay attention to the berries lining the child’s bucket.

Fair-going followed berry-plucking, as I ambled the zany lanes of the season’s first county fair. Mixed into the sensory overload, I sensed the advance of seasons. Flannel clothing was for sale and harvest displays lined the agricultural exhibit hall. The farm animals were fattened and wood stoves promised glowing embers against visions of winter.

I entertained a chicken fantasy after spotting two mop-topped baby birds for sale. I fancied them living in the garden, harvesting bugs while a winter enclosure was constructed. A kind of fowl fever overtook me as I imagined hearing their gurgly chuckles greeting morning and catching glimpses of their floppy feather caps flitting amongst the foliage. If they were still there when I was ready to leave, they would exit the fair with me. Perhaps for the best, they were gone, gathered up by some other chicken fancier.

As I was walking with my dog, Bu, the following day, a fluttery rain of faded leaves dusted the path we were traversing, driven by a brief but fairly forceful gust of steamy August air. Hints of seasonal progression happen as vibrant greens gradually gild tones of gold into our midst. The light lessens and days shorten.

Although we sense the summer waning, there’s still time to taste her succulent abundance. Garden tomatoes are just reaching their red ripeness and local sweet corn is at its peak, a crisp and juicy treat. Squash and pumpkins are putting on pounds and vining into knotty tangles of climbing tendrils. Berry bushes droop with the weight of ripening fruit. We crest the height of summer as autumn seeps into our awareness.