Nature Alerts Us To Seasons Changing

I've always been the type that loves to spend a lot of time outdoors.  And I've done so my whole life so far in Vermont. 

Some flowers remain around my St. Albans,
Vermont shed on a gloomy August Sunday evening

As we well know, the seasons change big time over the course of the year around here. Some of the joys of watching that is seeing how nature drops subtle hints about what's coming.  

Unless you spend years outdoors, almost every day, you can miss those subtle clues. It's a shame if you do miss them. Let me tell you, sitting outside in silence and feeling the seasons ever so slowly unfold is an experience everyone should have. And have often. 

It's August, and summer's days are starting to get numbered. Before the days of satellites, weather forecasts, Super Duper Doppler Radar and all the gizmos the meteorologists throw at us, it was nature that told us to watch the clock, if we cared about the changing seasons. Back in the day, our lives depended on that skill. 

Last evening was such a moment, but maybe a casual observer would miss it. After all, here in northwestern Vermont, the weather Sunday evening was humid and it was warm.  At first glance no change from what we've had for a couple months now. You know, summer. 

However, every year, sometimes around the second or third week in August you get a tell-tale evening like we had on Sunday.  It's a regular thing that happens every year, but I don't think about it until it happens. You get many days each year that tell you the seasons will change soon, and this was one of them. 

The sky turned gloomy during the evening.  It wasn't the sharp, heavy pre-thunderstorm darkness you get sometimes at the peak of summer, but rather a dim, almost sad grayness, a precursor of what you might experience in November.  A cloudier season is coming.  

Looking around, the green leaves on the trees, shrubs and weeds seemed tired all of a sudden, as if exhausted by all the photosynthesis they've been doing since May. The once neat garden rows in the raised bed were now in the messy chaos of harvest season 

Out by the road, a sugar maple, sick from years of road salt, had a bit of fall foliage to it. There were actually a couple of fallen autumn leaves on the lawn. 

On a gloomy August Sunday evening in St.
Albans, Vermont, hints of autumn color
on salt-damaged sugar maples

That rich, wonderful organic aroma to the air you sense on damp summer evenings has changed, too.  It's a little less sweet now, even more earthy than it was a month or two back. 

The outdoor soundtrack is different, too. Now, we get the steady hum of zillions of crickets in the weeds, with a couple of loudmouths among them punctuating the white noise with an exclamatory "zzz-zzz-ZZZIT!"

I'm not announcing summer is over, and neither was ma nature last evening. It was sort of a "you've got one month to go" warning. 

Today is humid and warm, tomorrow is forecast to be hot and oppressive. The rest of the week will bring us more true summer weather. It's not autumn, that's for sure. 

However, last evening was one of those many wonderful nights we get at all times of the year, in which it's just sublime to sit outdoors, quietly, and listen to ma nature and the seasons tell those same tales they give us every year. 

Those stories never get old.