Summer’s End
Different people define the seasons by different methods. Take summer for example.
Some define the season by the calendar: solstice to equinox. Some by holidays: Memorial Day to Labor Day. Others, children and those with children, as between the end and beginning of the school year.
I define it by the hummingbirds.
Summer ended sometime between yesterday and today. The hummers were buzzing around the feeder just yesterday.
Today? Not a hummer around.
Summer’s over even if the daytime temperatures are still in the 80s
Right with ya DT, same here. The hummers. They’re still here, as of last evening, but they are thinning out. At least half have moved on.
It’s going to be pretty warm this upcoming week so they may hang around for awhile yet, but the end is near.
I got something else to say about this “season” stuff I’m working on and I’ll post it later this week, it has to do with a “chicken”.
This is what a 4500 watt water heater upper heating element looks like. You have to have a 1.5″ socket and ratchet to remove it from the tank. A new one cost me $5.99 at Menards. Fairly easy project that would probably cost $300 for a pro to come out and do it, when they can get around to it.
Another beautiful photo, DT. I have a wonderful essay (not mine) about hummingbirds. Don’t know when I copied this so…
Since this short essay by Brian Doyle was published in the Scholar 15 years ago, it has been read hundreds of thousands of times on our website and often borrowed for classroom use. It is the lead piece in a just-published collection of Brian’s essays called One Long River of Sound: Notes on Wonder. Brian died at the age of 60 in 2017.
Posted
Sent a long reply to this but it disappeared – a wonderful essay sparked by hummingbirds. Trying again.
Both showed up here.
TQ!
Our hummingbirds are still nearby….I noticed one just this morning on the supports to my pepper plants as I was giving them a water. I pulled out my phone to snap a picture (who doesn’t like a picture of a hummingbird…amirite?), but by the time I fiddled around with the zoom, the bird had zoomed off. As you may recall, I give “fighter pilot” names to each of “my” hummingbirds…this one was “Lulu”, a female.