The folks that start celebrating Halloween right after Labor Day, the unofficial end of the summer day, are the very same who toss in Thanksgiving before the spooky candy has been unwrapped and the turkey isn’t even carved yet and up are going the Christmas lights, Ma Nature, not so fast she says, and always with her perfect timing comes the dog days of summer. The days ease in dripping humidity, tee shirts start sticking, all the yellow flowered hustle of spring’s marsh marigolds and dandelions now long absent still leave yellow drips in buttercups in hay fields yet to be cut.
Corn on the cob, watermelon, potato salad, burgers over a wood fired grill, grandkids smoreing their faces in chocolate, and it’s melty from the fire, and the day’s heat.
The baby ducks of spring have filled out nicely, but the plumage. There a teenage train wreck, down, still fluffing out from under all the new feathers, can’t quite fly, and the quacking, well sometimes they have it just right and at others, well there’s plenty of time still to come before the fall flights.
A lone dragonfly floats out over the ponds, no chorus of frogs, just an occasional croak now, and it’s odd to me, but the lone croaker, oh he must like them lingering hot afternoons that get him tuned up and tiny dangling apples still far too small, but they make you hope into some apple pie, apple fritters, and well since it’s still the dog days, I’ll grab a lemonade, sit in the shade, and take my time, with Ma Nature’s, unbelievable, On-timeliness.
--The trout whisperer
