Each summer-like day we have is a gift because we all know what lies on the other side.
Winter.
Months of Winter featuring snow, cold temperatures, leaf-less trees, sleet, hail and ice. Everyone is talking about the weather. Some say it's staying nice through October. Others are bemoaning the Ides of November and making us beware of the Polar Vortex. Still others point to El Nino. Good or bad, I don't know.
Checking the berries on our Mountain Ash a while ago, I discovered that there were very few clumps of orange berries and the birds are munching on them already. Last fall, there were tons of berries and as we all know, winter was harsh and snow was deep. I gathered the berries in a basket and took them into the house to lay along the fireplace mantel as Harvest décor. This year that won't be happening.
The berries are gone already. If this tree is a barometer, we're in for a milder season. Over the years it has forecast the weather correctly.
Haven't some of the evenings in this late summer been grand?
I was riding my bike in early evening around Barnfield Point a couple of evenings ago. Barnfield is a peninsula of land that juts out into Lake Couchiching here in the City of Orillia in Central Ontario. As I rounded the point, Starilte radio was playing a Hawaiian song- Aloha Oe. The brilliant orange sun was slipping below the trees across the water. The sky was filled with colour. It was amazing and beautiful. It reminded me of sitting on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu watching the sun melt into the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean. Watching the sun set behind the trees across the bay wasn't quite the same but it was beautiful all the same. Hawaiian sunsets are not as colourful as the ones we have here in Central Ontario. Ours are brilliant and full of colour. Hawaiian sunsets are more 70's flavoured- lots of fuschia and muted tones but just being in Hawaii of course, makes up for a more washed-out display.
I stopped for a couple of minutes to watch. Trees in the foreground were silhouetted against the deepness of the colours in the darkening sky. Some folks were sitting on tables and still others were watching from the paved trail. The sun soon slipped away as The World is Waiting for the Sunrise began to play on Starlite Radio.
The musical accompaniment couldn't have been planned any better- and it wasn't.
It just happened that way.
