Not just people, but the month of August itself is overheated and out of breath. Even the mercury is weary from having to daily climb to new heights. But I like August. I am prone to being cold in many of the other months of the year while everyone else is perfectly comfortable.
It's funny how we all have our favorite months, but then, why not August? It's the month when people have their greatest love affair with shade. It's the month when tourist site folks wear a great big smile as they store up tourist dollars like a squirrel stores away nuts.
But then, of course, it's the month when hurricanes visit coastal states and even get exuberant enough to create floods further in. When one of these high winds comes to call, would you like to show your intelligent understanding of the beast? Officially, anything over 74 miles an hour is a hurricane and then there is the circle of calm called the eye of a hurricane. That is usually 20 to 30 miles wide. The hurricane itself is certainly not skinny as it spreads out for as much as 400 miles. It definitely makes its presence known.
It's also the month of weeds as they compete with your garden. And the presence of Lammas Day when farmers used to give their workers gloves in preparation for harvesting time. (Lammas Day was one of the oldest medieval festivals, a feast with pagan origins. It was a celebration of the end of the growing season and the gathering of the harvest. The feast was particularly anticipated because it marked the end of the “hungry gap,” the time of year when food stocks were at their lowest, just before new produce was available at harvest time.)
And, when you are in the hospital and need oxygen, remember that this was the month Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen. It was also the month that Christopher Columbus’s wanderlust led him to set sail for America. Nor should it be forgotten that this was the month in 1908 when the first mass-produced car went on sale. America would never be the same again.
Nature plays golf and baseball in this month, dropping hailstones of these sizes from the sky. It is also the time when ripe red apples fall thudding from their trees. The grape vines grow luscious. The peach -- pink and lovely – has the same lovely taste to go with its look. And melons and flowers and the grass, well, they just turn brown if not properly watered by cooperating clouds or manmade sprinklers.
August is an interesting month, that is for sure, snaring your attention with that August rose. And what can be quieter than a breeze-less August day, until the sky changes its mind, grows dark and the wind whips at anything in the open.
So, place salve upon your summer burn and watch and listen to the buzzing bees and watch the daylight wane before approaching September.
And when it ends, say goodbye to this old friend of other summers too. Say your own goodbye to one last mental image of this month. And what is that? You choose. For in many ways it is what it is because of how you personally see it.