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Marking Time

         This is a great time of year. The days are still hot, but the nights are cool. The shadows are longer. The air just seems to be different. Evening comes much sooner. The morning creeps in a little later, like an employee who used to come in early with anticipation, but now shows up with a little less enthusiasm barely on time. The trees are changing.

         The squash, the beans, the peppers have all played out. There's still a few tomatoes. We'll have some fried green ones soon. Peaches are abundant. My basil has just about wilted away, but it still smells good. It's just too withered for cooking. The mosquitoes, wasps, and little lizards are still in full force. In fact, our neighborhood has been besieged with scrawny looking foxes and raccoons recently. A cat had to have surgery after a raccoon attack on its own porch.

         Asters and fall colored mums are started to show up. Our shrubs have been trimmed, and the summer flowers have been cut back. We're trying to get the yard in shape before leaf raking begins. Then the scarecrows and jack-o-lanterns will start to show up. 

         Maybe something about September makes us recall, if only vaguely, the resolutions, the dreams. Now as we rush towards the end of the year, we mark our progress or lack thereof. As children, it's a new time, a beginning of a new school term, a new course. Somehow as we get older, it marks the beginning of the end, as the year rushes to close up shop.

         It's exciting and sad, exhilarating and wistful, all at once.