Arrrrg! The last days of August are upon us. I'm lounging in the sunshine, sipping a cold one, and feeling as if summer might last forever-then it hits me-the schizophrenia of fall and winter being thrust upon me by the approaching month of September, and our society.
The stores are starting to stock the shelves with Halloween candy. Wait a second! It's still August; I haven't seen any pumpkins lying in the fields ready to harvest. The corn isn't ready to be turned into a dining room table centerpiece.
Everywhere I look, in newspapers and store windows, I see back-to-school sale ads. The malls are teeming with teenagers toting shopping bags emblazoned with the logos of the GAP, Abercrombie & Fitch, Macy's and the plethora of places peddling the latest in teen fashions.
Our mailbox bulges with Christmas catalogs. Christmas catalogs? Give me a break! The fair in Puyallup hasn't started yet. Bumbershoot is still ahead of us. I haven't even had my Thanksgiving turkey, for Pete's sake-whoever Pete might be. Don't be telling me about Christmas.
Then the sun takes a hiatus; the temperature tops out in the mid-60s, and suddenly it hits me; all those things I was going to do this summer, things that depend on summer for their doing, are lost to another year. I mean, who wants to landscape a steep bank in the back yard when it's cold, wet and muddy? A fellow could hurt himself out there.
Procrastination is such a pleasant pastime. It allows you to plan, to talk about your plans, and the plans you plan to plan, and then to plan some more, impressing your friends and filling you with the feeling you're going to accomplish great things, someday, all without actually lifting a finger.
But now the stark reality faces all of us: summer is drawing to a close. Those with school-age kids need to get them ready for another year of learning how to spell procrastination, a prerequisite to becoming a proficient procrastinator.
It's time to think about digging up the dahlias, bedding down the begonias, garroting your geraniums to winter over in the house, reseeding the sod and waylaying those wayward plants and trees.
The gray-sky mornings remind me that the days will suddenly become shorter. I'll awake one morning to find it's still dark outside and that I have barely seven hours of daylight to accomplish any sort of activity that is natural for a diurnal creature.
Is it any wonder that we get depressed in the Northwest? Just as our blood is adapting to the warm weather, thinning properly to provide nature's own cooling, the earth decides to flop over on its side and plunge us into the night-that-never-ends, dropping temperatures a precipitous 40 degrees, sapping us of our Vitamin D and turning on the atmospheric spigot that will nourish those weed seeds lurking among our daffodils.
I'm not ready to start carving jack-o-lanterns and hearing an optimistic "trick-or-treat" from behind plastic faces-or to even think about putting up Christmas lights, let alone braving the shopping malls amidst the demonic waving of credit cards.
I'm on the verge of breaking 100 on a regular basis at the golf course. I want sunshine and birds singing and more time to plan those tasks I need to do.
Where did I put my wine glass? I need a respite from this assault on my otherwise placid mental state. I need to remind myself that with the fall comes the turning of the leaves and fresh chanterelle, black trumpet and white matsutaki mushrooms in the stores.
Oh yes, and the 2006 vintage of cabernet, zinfandel, malbec and nebbiolo. Okay, now I feel a little better about fall coming on.[[In-content Ad]]
