SEPTEMBER BLUE

As the kids get ready to go back to school and the combines roar to life the natural world slips quietly into another gear too.  Plants, having fulfilled their destiny to grow, flower, and bear fruit are now letting themselves dry up and wither away (except for cucumbers which are into some crazy kind of overdrive).  Birds gather for massive conventions to discuss their route south and departure date.  There is the scent of completeness in the air – everything is mature, ripe, and well seasoned.  The sky goes from the dazzling bright blue of summer to the soft, powdery, cornflower blue of September.  It’s my favorite.

I don’t know how it happens so fast, but the sun’s bedtime is now earlier than mine again.  How does it take so long for the days to lengthen out between December and June, but the reverse happens in the blink of an eye.

It has been a wonky, crazy busy summer for me - caring for an elderly family member and having grandchildren stay with us while their family was moving.  Thankfully in both cases I wasn’t the only one on the job but it was a real eye opener into being in the middle of the ‘sandwich generation’.  The kids are back with their parents now and we are nearing the end of moving Grandma out of her home and into Long Term Care.  Life is bound to slow down pretty soon.  I hope.

I apologize to my fellow volunteers at Tourism for my absence throughout August.  I know I have been Missing in Action.  It’s not that the place can’t run without me - in fact the things I do can be done by anyone – but I wasn’t there to pitch in as much as I usually am.  By the looks of things everything is running smoothly, proving that I am dispensable.  We are close to the end of the season now and I will be there for the close-up jobs unless something drastic happens.

This might sound crazy but the best thing that happened this summer is that my vegetable garden was a complete failure.  The spring was so late and wet that I didn’t get it planted till the middle of June.  And, even though it had been worked several times the soil was the consistency of muddy bricks.  The potatoes struggled to get through the surface.  I got the other seeds in but then we had another deluge.  It stayed so cold that germination was dismal … until the heat turned up and every seed out there exploded with life.  92% of them were weed seeds. 

By the third week of July the corn was only a foot tall, stunted peas weren’t even in bloom yet and only a few yellow beans had made an appearance, the green beans hadn’t bothered to germinate at all.  I found enough beets and carrots to keep, but instructed the guy with the tractor and tiller to “make the rest just go away!”  I also put in an order for a substantial soil remediation project with straw and manure to be worked in and weed control tillage to be performed on a regular basis.  If it’s successful I may regret my request.  My 2023 garden might end up being a bumper crop and I’ve kind of liked the ease and luxury of just getting garden charity this year.  Oh well, I will worry about that when the time comes.

I’ve checked the long-range forecast – if it’s true there are no frost warnings in the foreseeable future.  There are a lot of farmers out there breathing a sigh of relief for their late crops, but my interest was to see if it was worth fertilizing my deck planters one more time.  They got one more dose.  Hopefully I will have blooms to enjoy for a few more weeks.  There is no better place to sit in the cool of the evening and watch the hummingbirds fight over sugar water.  They will be gone before the flowers are – we have gone from 10 to 7 to 3 this past week.  One morning in the near future there will be none and summer will be officially over.

But, while it lasts, I am going to try to soak in the softer September sun, listen to the crickets while I hang out the laundry a few more times, and enjoy that the grass is still green and soft enough to walk in bare feet.