The month of August fills me with a sense of urgency.
An urgency to stop, to resist the starting of things like new school years (futile, I know), but to savor the long, languid hours of daylight that end with flaring bright pink evening skies, to relish the open time in the studio and in the garden, to appreciate grilling our fresh vegetables and taking evening bike rides. To hear the screaming cicadas and watch grasshoppers blaze about, jumping wildly from the grape plants to the okra, with no particular intention, and yet to also look forward to what else summer still has in store: like our first edamame and okra harvest of the season, which will be any day now. So I tell myself I need to hurry up and hold it all the best I can because it is trying to get away.
Saturday I was standing in the kitchen drying a mixing bowl and looking out the window when a monarch dipped down and then a hummingbird, both to the zinnia blooms. Then a pair of house sparrows rested on the edge of our new makeshift birdbath (a fresh galvanized oil pan with a few rocks in it) and then a rabbit hopped by, munching on the grass. I recalled how as a child I loved the scene in Snow White (or was it Sleeping Beauty? Those Disney movies all blur into the same story) when all the animals and birds gathered and a bird rested on her finger. That's how that little moment outside my window seemed.
And I say urgency because my teaching days begin around the corner and that signifies that soon it will be autumn and then winter and it will be a long time until spring and summer reach us again.
So I've got this summer by the tail, with a firm, white-knuckled grip and am trying not to let any of it's goodness slip by unnoticed.
