How I know summer's over

Summer technically began June 21 and lasts until September 22. Really, though? It started on Memorial Day,  just as it always has, and it ended last night. (Sometimes the Memorial Day holiday also falls on my birthday, so we could just say summer starts on the day I was born. OH YES WE COULD.)

It's August 28. Three weeks of summer remain. Why do I say it ended last night? Because I drove home from my volunteer gig at the prison in the dark. SOB!

The more birthdays I celebrate, the more I avoid nighttime driving. It wouldn't be right, though, to leave the other volunteer carrying the meeting by herself until daylight lasts beyond 8:30 p.m. (Probably wouldn't be very good for me to go that long without a meeting either.)

It won't be long before the leaves
begin to turn and fall.

So I made that drive a little more slowly and a little more carefully last night, watching for deer (there are far too many this year, many more than I ever remember) and listening to Dylan.

There are plenty of good things about summer winding down.

• Fewer bugs.
• Less humidity.
• Cooler temperatures. I'm not old enough (yet) that I feel "chilly" all the time.

I'm anxious to put the vegetable garden to bed this year, as I didn't get much from it and it's pretty weedy and ugly right now. I never did finish weeding the herb bed, so that's on the fall garden chore list. (I also didn't mow yesterday – who wants to cut grass when they have a cute new 'do?) I'm even anxious to cut back the perennials, pull the weeds out of those beds and just move on with autumn.

I'm definitely NOT a fall gardener.

Cooler weather puts me in a knitting mood, too. I made a couple shopping bags this summer, but now that some of this weight has been released I want to knit for me-me-me. During the recent stash room purge I found several balls of a wool/cotton blend called Europa in a tweedy blue colorway that is slowly-but-surely becoming an On-the-Point vest. I hope it will be finished for the state Democratic women's convention next month.

And, of course, fall = FOOTBALL and football = lots of knitting time.

Seriously. What's not to love about the end of summer?