On the meteorological watch, seasons turned at precisely 12:00
am this morning.
As happened, this year’s summer ended not with a bang, but
on the midnight whisper of an inexorably changing wind.
Unlike recent years past, we never reached full on drought
status. The periodic downpours carried by occasionally tornadic storms saw to
that.
Yet given the typically withering August sun, today we
enter fall just on the edge of ‘abnormally dry’.
On those happy days when the heat and humidity weren’t too oppressive,
I made a point of getting out and about.
As ever, the prairie and oak savanna landscape abides.
Often thrives.
Especially where we’ve since retreated…
…and let that inestimably rich natural environment do its splendidly diverse thing.
Long about the middle of August, I mentioned to a dear friend
that when a changing wind finally broke the latest heat wave, I sensed the
first hint of autumn on the northwesterly breeze.
I thought it kind of early for that, considering the world of green.
A week later, signs of seasonal change were in the trees.
And today, here we are.
As if there’d been a plan all along.
