Summers End

“To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall.”
– Ann Patchett

The Autumn Colchicums with long summer bloomers

We all know that day, the crisp cool morning, the dew is heavy and you can see your breath as you walk out in the now dark early morning hours. By noon the foggy dew is burning off hard and by afternoon it's warm and the flannel comes off. Oh, these are the halcyon days. I've used that quote by Walt Whitman before, but I don't know if I went into the etymology. I mostly liked it because I used to follow a travel blog of some retired teachers, who bought a boat, named her the Halcyon and went about exploring the rivers, lakes and oceans wherever they could take her. 

The Halcyon,-I took this from wikipedia- From Latin Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the "halcyon days," when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successful.

My Halcyon days often involve fishing, and off the Pacific Coast where storms can ravage, I envy old Aeolus and his ability to restrain the wind and keep it calm, because when it's calm like the past few weekends, you would have found me at Salmon camp, following the ways of the indigenous coastal tribes who knew that when you had a Halcyon day you went to get the Salmon and stock up for the winter ahead.

It's been a wonderful end to summer, Salmon camp was successful and the fall bloomers have started in well. The rain has been here and gone and back again. Which is the way that I most enjoy it, a day or two of dry followed by a wet one makes for the perfect, easy end to summer. It's also really nice not to have to water anymore!

While I do have a huge amount of fall projects I need to get done ahead of the real "weather", I hope to be back here every so often with some fall blooming bulb pics. 

Showers this weekend, followed by sun and nice weather in the 70's. 

Cheers,

Mark