September!! I can’t believe it is September already. Because whether the weather knows it or not, summer is beginning to wane. I see it in the darker mornings, I felt it in the breeze yesterday. The last of the butterflies are getting ready to migrate. My summertime nail color seems all wrong, it is no longer time for bright berry pink.

It’s not quite over yet, however. My garden is still producing so many tomatoes we can’t keep up, no matter how many tomato and cheese sandwiches we eat – tomatoes fresh from the garden, sprinkled lightly with salt and pepper, set between two slices of cheese on toasted sourdough or pumpernickel rye bread. Yum! Served with a handful of Aged Cheddar and Black Pepper Lattice chips from Aldi’s. We eat it more nights than we probably should for dinner, but it is easy and we like it so much, and we know that its time is coming to an end. Soon we will be eating more soup, heartier dinners, chili. So we are making the most of our summertime sandwiches while we can, and feeling quite carefree about it.

I do feel like we are trying to soak up what is left of the summer. The other day my little niece Dino Girl came over and spent the day, and we gathered flowers from my garden and “captured summer in a jar” as best we could, in the hopes that the bright colors will linger and sustain us in the dark of winter.

I will miss all of our little garden creatures, the butterflies and caterpillars, the grasshoppers, katydids, cicadas. The birds darting in and out. The toads and the hardworking bees. The fireflies at night, probably my favorite most of all. Although, the giant broad-winged katydid was in our house, singing from on top of the curtain rod. We let him go and could not believe how well he was camouflaged on our apple tree. I won’t miss finding weird bugs inside.

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Everything is tinged in that golden glow – that late summer yellow of sunflowers and black-eyed Susans, and will turn to the brilliant yellow of autumn leaves in a few weeks.

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But good things are around the corner as well, school has started for us again, and the spooky season of Halloween is coming up. Books about ghosts and witches, scary podcasts and movies, trips to the orchard, another round of The Wild Hunt. Cider by the fire with my brother and his family. A camping trip this month. Chestnuts. A girl’s day with my crew, doing who knows what but something. A field trip to a castle and a field trip to find fossils and rocks. There are so many good things on the horizon, these that I have mentioned and hopefully many others. And let’s be honest. Isn’t fall the best of all?