I’ll be traveling soon without my computer so I’m writing this column several days before it’s due. I’m sitting on my screened porch with no need to turn on the ceiling fan. The temperature has risen to the mid-70s after a sunrise reading in the 50s. The humidity is low. I sip rather than gulp the glass of iced tea beside me on the table.
As I place my fingers on the keyboard and look out at my heavily wooded back yard before beginning to type, I notice the light is different. It slants through the still-lush trees at an angle that reminds me that nothing lasts forever. It’s still August, but summer is hurtling toward the finish line. This realization always makes me melancholy. Maybe it’s because I have trouble keeping up with raking once the leaves start to fall. Or because I detest pumpkin-spice anything. Or because I really, really don’t want to move my flip-flops to the back of the closet.
But, in truth, the weakening light is a grim reminder of the relentless passage of time. None of our hourglasses are as full as they once were.
I’m tired by summer’s end. Tired of being hot. Tired of being sweaty. And tired of taking care of flowers, which has been a challenge this year. Deer ate all the blooms off my snowball bushes. They gnawed my impatiens to the ground. They bit off every last orange flower on my beloved ditch lilies. Early one morning, as I headed to the compost barrel to dump coffee grounds and egg shells, I came face to face with a doe smack dab in the middle of one of my flower beds. She stared at me, unblinking.
“Get on out of here,” I hollered, waving my arms. “You’re destroying my yard!” Unruffled, she continued to stare. “Do I need to throw a rock at you?” The doe lowered her head to continue grazing on my hostas. I didn’t pick up a rock. But when she finally moved away, I was glad.
And don’t even get me started on squirrels, who—though they can’t get sunflower seeds out of my super-duper squirrel-proof feeder—congregate underneath it and gobble up whatever the birds spill. Watching this day after day, I came up with the crazy idea of planting some sunflower seeds in a patch of dirt near my electric pole. It gets direct sun all day and is a long way from the feeder. Squirrels probably wouldn’t even notice seeds buried there.
Wrong. They dug them up within minutes.
Discouraged but not defeated, I planted more seeds in deep pots on my sunny second story deck. They soon sprouted. When the seedlings were several inches tall, I moved them to the patch of ground near the electric pole. They grew and grew. I was going to have a sunflower garden after all! Then those plants disappeared, too. Were squirrels the thieves again? Or deer? Or perhaps the groundhog who lives in my drainage ditch? There was no way to know. Clearly, my efforts were doomed to fail.
These days, I try only half-heartedly to weed and water the few flowers that remain alive. The vinca has grown leggy. Zinnia leaves are covered in brown spots. Bee balm lies forlornly on the ground. Ferns are droopy and sparse.
But as I watch the slanted rays of late summer sun shine through the oaks and maples and poplars and sycamores in my yard—trees that will soon shed their leaves and thus erase the sacred privacy of my screened porch—I can’t help but morn the changing of the seasons. The autumnal equinox, when day and night are equal, will arrive in just three weeks. Then nights will begin to grow longer than the days. And though I’ll likely still be wearing flip-flops, I’ll know that winter is on its way.
Nothing lasts forever, the light in August whispers. Nothing.
(August 31, 2024)