What Happened to Summer?

For years now, my summer has begun in May when classes ended. If May is full of promise, June brings fulfillment: family reunions, resplendent gardens, summer projects initiated. July is full of festivals, patriotism and grown baby birds coming to the bird feeder. The garden glows with flowers like these black-eyed susans that bloomed this year. But too soon after July 4, the clearance sales begin!

Mid July is often hazy, marked by a suspension of time punctuated only by the buzz of grasshoppers and crickets in the drought-stricken lawn. On this past July 19, we experienced a fierce storm that resembled an inland hurricane. It struck with little warning and left broken trees littering the streets and whole neighborhoods--up to 1.5 million people at the worst point--without power for up to a week or more in 100-degree weather. We prevailed during our 121 hours of no electricity through the generosity of neighbors who let us plug a fan into their generator, and the proximity of the air-conditioned university campus, which never lost power. It was more of an inconvenience than a catastrophe, but the experience gave us a new appreciation for the obstacles faced by Hurricane Katrina survivors and those who have lived with substandard conditions for years.

By the beginning of August, back when I was teaching, there was a sense of urgency to capture quickly what was left of summer, because school would begin in three weeks or so. Even now, I look at the overgrown mess of wild vines tangling what was once a tidy garden, and note the increasingly territorial behavior of hummingbirds around the feeders, and sense that summer is waning, just as surely as the sun is rising later and night shadows gather earlier. The cicadas rasp louder every evening in the oak tree out front, and the tree frogs are growing a little hoarse with their calls in the night. Any day now, flocks of blackbirds and then robins will gather on the nearby golf course or county park fields in preparation for migrations south. By Labor Day, this progression from summer to fall will be impossible to ignore. But for now, I'm going to try to savor what is left of summer--the exercise sessions at the outdoor pool, a vacation trip to the Ozarks, reading a long novel. We will replace the tired and crisped annuals in some of the beds and pots with fresh fall-blooming plants and wait for our moonflower vine on the porch to finally bloom--another sure sign of the season's changes.