The Long Sunset of Summer
“The long sunset of summer is beginning.”
I quietly slip out of the house into the misty, early morning with Bella. Stepping carefully around the dew-laden cobwebs, my Birkenstock-clad feet are soaked within moments, as are Bella’s feet and underbelly. The sun, usually cresting the smaller trees on the eastern boundary of our property during the summer, hangs lower in the sky. The long sunset of summer has begun.
I am not the only one to notice the slight shift halfway through this summer season. Linda, a retired educator, shares in her blog that August was always referred to by her colleagues as “one long Sunday night.” In her blog post, August So Far, Pearl shares that “August, can be a temperamental month, undecided if it wants to hang onto summer or hedge towards fall.”
This week, I noticed that the outdoor shelving at the grocery store had been filled with sunflowers, chrysanthemums, and fall plant baskets. The flyers stuffed in my mailbox offer back-to-school sales. Costco has stocked their shelves with Halloween candy.
Dew is always my forewarning. At night, we tilt the cushions before going to bed to ensure a measure of comfort for our morning coffee enjoyed outside. Still, droplets fall from the outdoor umbrella as I take my first sip, wrapped in my Turkish throw. The robins and towhees are busy in the grass digging up worms. Bella watches them with eager curiosity. Swallows, who tease Bella, encouraging her to run after them, glide seamlessly through the air. I have already begun collecting seeds from dying herbs and flowers. I notice there are more sun-dried coriander seeds to harvest. The poppy pods are turning a light shade of brown and are also ready to be cut. There is another ripe tomato to be picked. But my prize dahlia is full of blooms, more flowers than I have ever seen on one plant. And the thunbergia is brimming with yellow flowers, its vines still winding further up the trellis.
There is much to look forward to this month. Tonight, we will drag a mattress out to the deck in anticipation of catching the Perseid meteor shower, one of the most plentiful meteor showers we experience here in the northern hemisphere. The Perseids showcase 50 to 100 hundred meteors per hour.
A week from now, we will be staring up at the sky again to witness the first supermoon of 2024, the sturgeon moon named after the giant sturgeon found in some Canadian lakes and rivers. Alternate names for this August full moon include flying up moon to the Cree, harvest moon to the Dakota, ricing moon to the Anishinaabe, the mountain shadows moon to the Tlingit, and the black cherries moon to the Assiniboine.
I recently re-subscribed to Harrowsmith and was pleasantly surprised that the 2025 Almanac was included in this edition. I am reminded to weed garden beds and apply organic fertilizer, and harvest fruits and vegetables as they ripen. The almanac predicts more clear days with rain starting in another week or so. This is the month we usually drive to the Okanagan to purchase cases of peaches, nectarines and tomatoes for canning. Extreme temperatures in January severely damaged the stone fruit this year; and apricots, peaches, nectarines and plums have been nearly decimated.
At our island home, August offers abundant local products to feed dinner guests. We buy meat from the farm across the road, eggs from the farm down the road, and fresh veggies and garlic from farm stands close by. We fill the gaps at our local market, purchasing fresh bread, chutney, honey, mushrooms, and baked goods.
Here, blackberries hang heavy from bushes. Strangers often stop at the end of our property to fill their buckets. I have also been out picking, placing them in my granddaughter’s cupped hands. She ate so many one afternoon that I told her she would be peeing purple blackberry juice - resulting in a quick trip to the toilet to see if Omi was right!
August
When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
- Mary Oliver