The End of August
I love the messy abundance at the end of August – all those tomatoes hanging heavy, the squash vines sprawling, and the sunflowers smiling above it all. But there’s also the fatigue that comes with summer’s end, visible in the shriveled onion tops and exacerbated by the dramatic swings in temperature, from the sticky eighties just after noon, to the chilly forties just before dawn. Great changes ahead.
We’ll have platters of tomatoes on the counter from now until frost.
For years, these changes involved returning to school, first as a student, then as a teacher, and again as a parent. The anticipation was like turning a corner and discovering a new landscape filled with expansive possibility and the relief of a return to routine.
But routine may be a fantasy.
Nevertheless, I try to arrive at my desk in the dark and write through dawn. Ideally, this is advancing my current work-in-progress, which is a novel I set aside several years ago in order to write Reviving Artemis, my memoir that hits bookstores on November fourth. This summer, I’ve been back and forth with the publisher about marketing plans and finalizing both the cover (front, back, spine) and the text block. This past weekend, I reviewed the book for the last time before it goes to print. That part is now done.
But another part of the life of this book is just beginning—connecting with my readers. My challenge now is to protect my mornings for the novel and devote my afternoons to publicity. That’s the dream, anyway.
As the garden winds down, there are fewer chores, more time. We processed our meat birds on Saturday, and cleaned out the deep freeze to make room for them. With this year’s bounty of berries and green beans, the freezer is near capacity while the tomatoes are still coming in thick and fast. We’re gorging on the heirloom slicers and turning our bounty of Speckled Roma paste tomatoes into sauce, which we’ll seal in jars and store in the basement pantry.
Peanut butter & tomato sandwich. Delish.
At the same time as the garden decelerates, this year’s pullets have started laying. They will soon join the laying flock in the coop.
And so, we keep circling around the sun. As the poet T. S. Eliot says, “. . . to make an end is to make a beginning. / The end is where we start from.”
Farewell, August. I hope to see you again next year.
Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress Preorder now for 11/4/25 delivery.
Coming next week: a book review of a colleague’s new novel. Have Living in Place emailed to you by subscribing to my Substack page here. It’s free.