The season changes with the squash vines. One day, they are huge, and lush, and growing six inches in a morning and the next—there’s a hint of powdery mildew on a leaf, the growth is finished, and the squashes themselves are developing a thick skin. On the same day, the color of the sky deepens from mid-summer blue to end of summer blue and the dreaded Welcome Back letter arrives in the mail. I always open the letter, decide if I’m going to the Golden Apples (the celebrate-the-best-teachers ceremony which begins the year), and hide it deep in the back of the schedule book. There are still a few glorious weeks of summer remaining.
Other signs:
§ Potato harvest
§ Beans drying on tarps at Sunbow
§ Hay bales and dusty air on the back roads of the valley
§ Macintosh apples are ripening
§ Blackberry picking
§ Chickens sleep until 6:30—oh yeah!
§ Peepsters are laying small eggs
§ The High Cascades are open—best backpacking of the year begins
§ The herbs are flowering and covered with bees
§ Honey Harvest
§ No traffic—all of the students have gone home for a few weeks
§ New schedule book and fine-tipped pen
§ Food dehydrator hums in the back yard
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