The end of days - and post #203
Gosh, this is my 203rd post! I didn't even notice when I hit number 200. Of course, that's a small number of posts compared to some of my more prolific bloggy friends, but considering my workload, well, it's not too bad.
It's painfully apparent that summer is drawing quickly to a close. The weather isn't the giveaway, though. It's the absence of the sun at times when, in the very near past, it has normally hung high in the sky. I really noticed it this morning when The Spouse left for work. Usually, I can see his car just fine as I stand at the kitchen window waving goodbye. This morning, the sun had yet to peek above the horizon. The sky was almost still dark, and he needed his headlights. That was at 6:00 AM.
Wasn't it just last week that the sun was waking me up at 5:00 AM as it blasted through the bedroom window? It seems like it. Even now, at 7:50 AM, the sun is just barely above the tops of the 20 foot tall trees in the neighbor's yard. And it has moved into a more southerly position in the sky, as opposed to the very easterly one it occupies all summer long. And last night after work, as I mowed the lawn, I found myself doing so in growing darkness, barely finishing the front yard before it became too dusky to see where I'd mowed and where I needed to mow. By 7:30 PM it was too dark to continue. Not that it was actually dark, mind you. It was just not bright enough to continue mowing. In another week, it will be too dark by 7:00 PM.
The color of the sun's light has changed too, especially the afternoon light. It has taken on that autumn glow that signals the trees to change color, and evokes an innate sense of urgency and impending change in many of us. It has a more golden color to it, as opposed to the white-hot color of the July sun. The summer sun invites us to languish in it, to soak it in, to relax and take it easy. The autumn sun urges us to hurry, to organize, prepare, complete projects, stock our cupboards. It whispers to us, reminding us that winter is just around the corner; and no amount of tweaking of daylight savings time will stop its arrival. But between summer and winter is autumn, harvest, the season of change. I'm looking forward to the apple harvest festivals this region holds each year, to college football games, to Parents' Weekend at Youngest Son's college, to the end of mowing season, to the gorgeous, crisp sunny days when the sky is as blue as a topaz, and the mountains to the east stand out in relief against it. I will miss summer, but I am ready for fall, and it's getting nearer day by day.
