Not Over Yet

A heron departing the wetlands flies up and across the morning sun. With each wingbeat it grows closer to silhouette: white, then silver, then black. Then the bird has risen directly into the sun’s path, and you must drop your watch of this or be blinded. You close your eyes to recover.

September — they say summer is over. That position does not give summer much credit. How could she just end? Something so vibrant and desirably warm, the season of fruit, green grass and fresh vegetables, does not die in a day. September is the culmination of summer, the harvest. Tomatoes, grapes, potatoes. Each thing, enjoying the cool nights, matures. The sugars go up, and summer, the closer we get to its celestial end, becomes very sweet. Not over.

Wholesale business plummets. The restaurants are no longer full; some close. My associate reports that the chefs are requesting fall vegetables. I angrily ask in what refrigerated field I might have grown these Brussels sprouts? For September harvest? They don’t even taste good in September.

At least one problem with saying summer is over in September is that it gives local agriculture a somewhat impossible request. Should we ignore what our region provides “in season” and aspire to match what can be driven or flown here from different parts of the world? When the season is truncated in the kitchen and determined by trend and not availability, the small vegetable farms are left with the bushels they had idealistically hoped would be canned.

And these farmers, being farmers, make an idealistic note to self: Research varieties of broccoli that can take the summer heat, and plant that, too, next year.

Farmers are caught in two seasons: that which is active upon them, and that which is external and imposed by perception. Not the clouds, or lack thereof. This year is this.

I survey the fall crops. Planted in loose ground during the drought and early August heat, they struggled to take hold. We irrigated, but they are still smaller than I wish.

Days get shorter, growing slows. It finally rains, and everything drinks.

The green of late September grows deep and dark, not over.