It’s with a heavy heart that I’m watching August wind down, and with it, for all intents and purposes, our summer season.
Sure, we can usually count on some nice weather in September, but August, to me, is the month that breaks the back of summer.
I can see our daylight declining on an almost daily basis now – some nights it’s dark well before 9 p.m., and it is now a dusky dawn at 6 a.m., instead of the full daylight of a month ago.
For the past several weeks, it has been ‘way to hot to tackle many yard chores; now they’re looming in front of me when I get home, and now that it is cooling off, I have no more excuses not to do them.
It’s a drag.
With a change in the weather this week, it really looks like the super hot weather is done for the year. Time to start putting away the water toys, I guess.
The garden is starting to look like late stage summer as well. I planted squash, cantelope, cucumbers and zucchini this spring, but for some strange reason, only the zucchini grew. It grew very well. I have zucchini coming out of places zucchini shouldn’t even be.
I’ve taken a couple of bags in to give to my fellow co-workers, and to make things interesting, asked them each a mildly skill testing question, without letting them know what they could win.
“Congratulations,” I told each of them as they easily answered the question put to them.
“You’ve won a zucchini!”
I found myself thinking I should have asked harder questions. If they answered incorrectly, they’d have to take two zucchini.
At any rate, the vegetable is piling up in the office. They need to take their winnings home.
Other than for my zucchini, I don’t have a lot of extra vegetables to offer. That’s generally the case; I’m usually lucky if enough comes up to feed my wife and myself for a few meals. I like the idea of growing a garden; I don’t much care for gardening itself.
You’re bent over most of the time, fighting weeds that grow far more easily than your vegetables, and constantly having to monitor for pests and diseases. It’s a full time job, and generally by mid summer the weeds have taken over, leaving only the hardiest of my plantings to survive.
The end of summer also comes with it a feeling of impending doom. I think that might be a carry over from my school days, when I would begin to dread the prospect of returning for another school year. This year must be even more stressful on those still going to public school, as we’ve heard no word on how the negotiations with the province and the teachers are going.
Finally, as the month winds down, I’m seeing less and less activity on Seventh Avenue. It’s as though people’s attention has turned away from relaxing, and killing time with a cup of coffee at Emmy’s, a hot dog at Rob’s or a beer at the Branding Iron or the Wrong Turn Tavern. As summer comes to an end, it looks like we’re turning to more serious matters than just hanging out. And that’s probably the number one thing that makes this part of the year such a bummer.
