OK, so how exactly did that happen? One day, we're sitting outside in the daylight well after 9 p.m., commenting on how balmy it is. The next, we're here. September.
It's time, the lifestyle magazines tell us, to get back into a routine. Time to bring out the soup pot, they say. To dig out the sweaters. To stow away the patio set. To get the furnace serviced and the fireplace cleaned.
To which I say: No! No, no no!
To many people, including those who work for the lifestyle magazines, September signals the start of fall, if not the unofficial new year.
The arrival of Labour Day means we're done with the fun stuff. No more jumping off the dock at the cottage. No more toasting marshmallows over a beach fire. No more lounging
around in a hammock or hanging out on a restaurant patio with an ice-cold mojito.
It's time, we're told, to start replacing one wardrobe with another. Never mind that it may still be 25 degrees at the peak of the
day. Those white Capris just have to go.
Well, I'd like to inform the editors of those lifestyle magazines - and anyone else who wants to spoil my fun - that
fall has most definitely not arrived. There are, by golly, almost three weeks of summer left, and I, for one, will not go gently into that new season.
No way. The sandals will stay, as will the patio set and the mojitos. If I had a cottage with a dock, I'd continue to use it. Ditto with a hammock.
I vow not to make a pot roast or a single batch of stew until after the fall equinox. I will not have the furnace serviced until later
this month. I promise to not even fire it up, no matter what the temperature.
I don't care what the lifestyle magazines editors say about routine. If I want to eat dinner at 8:30 one day and 4:30 the next, then that's precisely what I'll do.
Routine can just wait until October.
Seems those lifestyle magazines are forever wanting
to jump the gun when it comes to seasonal happenings. You know: they want us to start thinking about doing the Christmas baking when we've barely had time to put away the Halloween costumes. They want us to plan the menu for Easter dinner as soon as we've finished the Valentine's Day chocolate.
I get that it's good to plan well in advance, but this is another story.
I haven't arrived at autumn just yet. My feet are still planted in summer.
