Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Season Season

The middle part of the month of August was a blessedly and uncommonly cooler couple of weeks here at the northern end of southern nowhere. We have Tropical Depression Fay to thank for it mostly. She kept the skies cloudy and brought cooling rain. We got just enough rain from her--unlike most of Florida. Just enough rain to make the flowers in Miss Brenda's gardens bust out in a last hurrah of the season. Just enough rain to push the grass into a two mows-a-week growth spurt. Just enough rain to arrest the summer shoreline shrinkage in Lake Brenda.

August is a time of scrambling for me. Scrambling to complete as many chores and projects as possible. Come September the tools are replaced by toys and I play hard for the next five months. September is the kick-off of the season season. Football season; dove season; deer season; duck season--they all pile on to each other in the coming months like a team tackle in a sandlot football game. Not until February, will I rest from my recreation and once again yoke myself to the plow.

The next five months will pass in a flurry of red-clad visits to the Grove and Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, camo-clad and bow-armed clambers into treetops, and wader-wrapped sloshes through sloughs and flooded timber. It is the time of year for which I pine during the rest of the year. The other seven months are wasted on my calendar--filled with the drudgery of work without respite and dreams of hotty toddy, crunching leaves, and whistling wings.

I tell myself I've earned this next season of seasons--and I'm almost convinced. No matter. I'm playing anyway.

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