Sweet August is blooming

There are three months of summer here in Nova Scotia, June, July and August. And August is here with its wild tansy roadsides and goldenrod blooming. Everything is gold. Black eyed Susans are popping up in the least expected places, and sunflowers are standing strong. The farmers markets are abundant. My fridge has local cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries sitting in their soft green pint boxes. August is as full of high tides and promise as July if we take it day by day. And I try. It is a sleepy month, the excitement of summer has settled down a bit and replaced with the knowledge that there is only a few weeks left. 

August is the time of turning. The turning of the summer towards the fall. The first thing to turn is the light. The light starts to close in on the evening a little earlier. The sun rises just a smidge later. As I pad around in my bare feet, it is still summer after all, I notice these things quietly slipping into my days. And I love them. I begin to see things differently.

I begin to think about going back to school though I have not been there in forty years. I get out my pens and notebooks in preparation. I make lists. Joyful hopeful lists that may only ever be lists. Today I wrote, "Make a practice of writing daily" on that list. This is not the first time my pencil has told the paper such a secret. I start to ponder about what to do next. That beautiful glow of opportunity that comes with a new season.

I savour the last of the grape leaves and roll them with lemon and cinnamon and rice and beef. I take a road trip because the weather is perfect for a ride. I drive just for the ride. August is here and expects to be noticed as summer as much as July was. Yet somehow as soon as it arrives I am thinking about how it will be leaving. Not in a sad way for I love September. September comes on us like a second new year. Another chance to get it right. Another fresh start. Another new notebook and pen of possibility.

So as I savour the summer, I am also filled with a happy anticipation of long days in the studio, hook in hand. Of cool evenings and my favourite sweater. I am always ready for fall. And I think that is partially because less is expected of the autumn. I don't feel as if I should be making "the most of it" like I do summer. I feel that it is ok to settle and stay put.

These, of course, are only the expectations I create for myself in summer. No one else actually cares, only me. And because I live in my head this can still be a problem. We create our own concerns and pressures so often and it seems hard to overcome them even though we know the only one policing them is ourselves. "Why?" I wonder does it matter if I make the most of August? What does it actually mean to make the most of something? Who knows what the most is? And then you come back to the unoriginal idea of "day by day" and you remember that sometimes the unoriginal might have been the most inspired after all. For each day whether it is July, August, September is a thing onto itself. You cannot hold it in your hands. You can only slip through it and once it is gone you will only be a ghost who was there. A shadow who slipped through it like a soft sheer curtail blowing in an open window. And the only time that will matter is the moment you are now in and that will feel as real as August is beautiful.