Last night as we all sat down to dinner, everyone suddenly realized that summer was rapidly coming to an end. Maybe it was that the nights are getting cooler (so cool that we have to find our sweaters) or that the days are getting incrementally shorter – shadows are now on the tops of the trees that just a few week before glowered in setting brilliance while we dined. Leaves are starting their magically impossible wardrobe change and there is a very definite crisp apple-scented feel of approaching fall in the air.
Kids will soon be leaving to go to college and back to school. Swim team and days of nothing to do in the afternoon but what you want will soon be over.
It’s a melancholy time, as we all hold our breath while the circle of time turns. Some looking forward to the changes the seasons will bring, others a bit more trepidacious and uncertain as to what the future holds in store.
Even the animals feel this change in our life’s schedule. Pippin, normally a frenetic white storm, stayed near a fire Trevor built in our cast iron stove – a fixture that for years has sat in a corner of our patio ready to add its comfort to our late season dinners - content to stare memorized at the flames while gathering its wisps of warmth against his coat.
And Charlie, who came to the dinner table hoping for a discarded dinner scrap or two, soon realized that a nap, with her head tucked warmly under her wing was something that seemed more in order.
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Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at [email protected]
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