August: The Golden Month

August is the Golden Month. It is the month when Goldenrod fills open fields, turning them into oceans of amber. It's the month when Black-eyed Susans grow wild in meadows and along roadsides, and bring a big splash of cheer to our home gardens.

It's the month when Monarch butterflies begin to cruise through and light on Dahlias, Phlox, Cornflowers, and whatever else happens to be blooming, before laying their eggs on milkweed, setting in motion the process of perpetuating the species.

It's the month when marsh grasses mature and impart a lovely, multi-hued aura to lands near the coast, with greens and browns mixed in with the golds.

 

August is the month when sunflowers, towering above everything else in the garden, reach their maturity. Young Goldfinches, among the last songbirds to be fledged for the summer, come with their parents to pluck the ripe seeds out of the centers of the blossoms. 

But not all the August flora is golden. Queen Anne's Lace, with its complex, delicate, seemingly otherworldly beauty, blooms alongside the Goldenrod and Black-eyed Susans. 

It is the month when Argiope aurantia makes her welcome return to our flower beds. She nightly spins her beautiful webs, luring unsuspecting flies and beetles to their doom. At the same time, ripe, juicy blackberries lure me into their thorny midst, to endure scratched arms and legs for the sake of gathering a few tasty treats!

Numerous other seasonal events also define August. It is the month when the Perseid meteor showers tempt us to venture out late at night, in the hope of witnessing a celestial light show. It is the month for marveling at the acrobatic maneuvers of flocks of Nighthawks, as they hunt insects at dusk; their long, pointy wings with transverse white stripes make them unmistakable even to casual observers. It is the time for mowing rowen, and the chance to enjoy another display of avian acrobatics, from swallows this time, before they make their early exit from New England and head south for the winter. It's the month of agricultural fairs, of corn on the cob, of ripening apples, of wearing t-shirts and shorts during the hot days and bundling up in sweaters and sweatshirts during the chilly nights.

For so many years, when the cycle of my life was tied to the academic calendar, August was a time of, if not exactly dread, of less-than-eager anticipation of the changes that September would inevitably bring. As a kid, the prospect of exchanging the carefree, unstructured time of Summer for the regimen of the school day was unwelcome, to say the least. As an adult, working in a university, August meant that the relative quiet of a thinly-populated summer campus would soon be transformed into a time of chaos and commotion, as hordes of students returned, and faculty and staff were plunged into a seemingly endless series of meetings and receptions. 

One of the great joys of retirement has been that I can now enjoy August--in all its golden splendor--as never before. Yet it remains a time that brings out uncertain and ambiguous emotions. Can summer really be over already? But I never quite got around to doing X, Y, and Z as I had planned. I'm tired of mowing the lawn and weeding & watering the gardens...but I'm not ready to think about raking leaves, and certainly not about shoveling snow. Is it time to put away the air conditioners and fans? But what if we get a very warm "Indian summer"? (Now there's a term that needs to go away!*) The Fall foliage should be beautiful...but it's been so dry. Will we get much of a display?

I find Sylvia Plath's characterization of August to be quite cogent: 

The best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd, uneven time.

And so it goes.

---

*For an exploration of the term "Indian Summer" and some of its cultural and historical meanings, see Beneath the Second Sun, by Adam Sweeting.