Hard to believe it’s almost the end of August, isn’t it? Where has this year gone? When I think of August I think of hazy, hot, and humid days, the furniture in the house getting all sticky from the humidity, the hurricane tracking chart I’d order each year from WBZ-TV meteorologist Don Kent, heat lightning in the distance, fresh tomatoes out of the garden, and selling our grandfather’s gladiolas out of a bucket on the side of Salem Road. I think of dreading that day when the Merrimack Valley Advertiser would post the school bus routes for the upcoming school year; that meant summer, for all intents and purposes was at an end.

Of course, here in the Valley of the Sun, August is just another hot month in a string of hot months that begins in May and lasts until the heat gods swip the flitch the second week in October. Out here the kids have already been back to school for a couple of weeks now. But you know it’s August, not June, because the days are getting increasingly shorter – we’re losing almost two minutes per day – and the sun angle has the swimming pool and the south-facing landscape increasingly in shade.

So this weekend it’s all about August poetry. Lay back, chill out, and embrace those lazy, hazy crazy days of summer!

“Whilst August yet wears her golden crown,
Ripening fields lush- bright with promise;
Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing
Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn.”
– Michelle L. Thieme, August’s Crown

Hat tip: egreenway.com

Happy birthday, Mom!