Summer arrived so quickly this year that it feels almost unfair how quickly it has started to leave.
It isn’t autumn yet. Not really.
The garden is still green, the days can still be warm, and everything around us still looks very much like summer.
But in the mornings, you can tell.
The air has changed.
Some days we wake up surrounded by fog. The kind that hides the fields, softens the trees and makes everything beyond the garden disappear for a while.
Mornings are colder now, sometimes surprisingly so after the warmth of the previous afternoon.
And suddenly there are spiderwebs everywhere.
They were probably there all summer, of course. We just didn’t notice them. Now the morning dew traces every single thread, turning them into tiny structures suspended between branches and grasses.
Perhaps the most obvious change is the sun.
You notice it when you live somewhere with an open horizon. Throughout summer, we watch the sunset slowly move across it. Now it is travelling back again, little by little, setting somewhere slightly different each evening.
And earlier.
Definitely earlier.
There is still plenty of summer left in the garden, though.
The zucchinis apparently have no intention of slowing down — something we’ve already learned to live with this summer. We pick them, turn around, and somehow there are more. Some are small and perfect. Others manage to become enormous almost overnight.
The tomatoes, on the other hand, are taking their time.
Very much their time.
While the zucchinis behave as if they are competing in some kind of end-of-summer production contest, the tomatoes seem completely unconcerned by the approaching change of season.
And the cats?
The cats certainly haven’t received the memo that summer is coming to an end.
They still disappear for hours, wandering through the fields and towards the forest, returning whenever they decide the day’s adventures are over.
The cows in the surrounding fields don’t seem particularly concerned either.
For them, apparently, summer is still very much in progress.
And then, here and there, the first leaves appear on the ground.
Only a few.
Not enough to call it autumn.
Just enough to notice.
Maybe that’s how summer really ends here. Not on a particular day and not with one dramatic change.
It leaves in small pieces.
A colder morning.
A spiderweb covered in dew.
The sun disappearing a little earlier.
Fog where yesterday there was a view.
One yellow leaf lying in the grass.
Meanwhile, the garden keeps growing, the cows keep grazing and the cats keep wandering as if summer might last forever.
For a little while longer, perhaps it will.