The End of Summer

I went outside this morning just after 7.00 am to water the tubs and it felt as though it was September already. Strung across my path between a tub and the wall of the house was a cobweb with a spider in the middle of it and, as I brushed past it, my mind went straight back to my childhood. At my primary school there was a gorse hedge outside the school hall and, when we lined up outside to go into morning assembly the first morning after the summer holidays, the hedge would be strung with autumnal cobwebs. Now it is starting to happen in early August, and it seems that the seasons are starting earlier and earlier. Summer seems to be almost over already.

This impression was confirmed when we did our favourite walk across the Green to the Winston Churchill statue and back this morning, for the first time in a couple of weeks. Everywhere was looking yellow and brown, the soil was parched and the trees were showing signs of distress. The mown paths through the grass are now just hard and cracked earth. 

I thought it ironic that the weather forecast was showing warning symbols for flood alerts on the rivers Duddon and Brathay up in the Lake District this morning, while we have had no rain for at least two months and none is forecast for the foreseeable future. My new water butt hasn’t had a single drop of rainwater in it yet … !

[The collage looks better in large.]


The End of Summer

When poppies in the garden bleed,
And coreopsis goes to seed,
And pansies, blossoming past their prime,
Grow small and smaller all the time,
When on the mown field, shrunk and dry,
Brown dock and purple thistle lie,
And smoke from forest fires at noon
Can make the sun appear the moon,
When apple seeds, all white before,
Begin to darken in the core,
I know that summer, scarcely here,
Is gone until another year.

Edna St. Vincent Millay