The Summer's End
The scorching sun with its record temperatures are but a memory now. I daydream out of the kitchen window wondering how the sunflowers are still standing. Like beacons they loom, desperately clinging onto the summer that was.
I reluctantly drag the window shut as a sharp chill blasts through the curtains, doors slamming around the house as if protesting at the obvious seasonal transition outside that can no longer be ignored. The sudden chill makes all the hairs on my arm awaken, that well-known marker of coldness will now walk alongside the shortening days no doubt.
But I can’t stand still. Wellies, waterproofs and hound. No matter what the weather, escape.
Late afternoon lights start to appear at windows as I walk through the village. The familiar waft of wood smoke, rotting apples and damp reminding me of many times gone by. A half-light world is now awakening, one of hygge corners, comforting crackling fires and a general slowing.
I pass the grey war memorial; red flashes of geranium flowers being pelted by raindrops brings me back to my senses. I look back realising how far I have wandered, lost in my own thoughts. Quite fitting as is this not the time to be taking stock and hunkering down for the months ahead? Glancing around, I wonder where the flowers and colour have gone, I am sure they were here yesterday. Gardens, window boxes and hanging baskets as far as the eye can see, now spent, tired and bereft of energy, nothing but desiccated skeletons stare back.
Where did summer go?
I wander on through the old iron kissing gate to the horse field, the clunk of metal on metal somewhat satisfying, testifying I am here again. Carrots for the horses, blackberries for me – a fair trade. How laden the hedgerow is with hips, haws and berries, their red dots staccato the now emptying branches. A sign of a harsher winter to come perhaps? Do the birds and animals know this I wonder, as the white squirrel disappears up a sycamore now fashioning mottled leaves with black spots.
All I see is brown.
A muddy shroud seems to be taking over.
That moment of summer's end.
It is here.