Welcome, September

I am so over summer.  August was brutal here in hell Texas.  I’ve been living in cotton dresses, flip-flops and the bare necessities.  We’re also in the worst drought in living and recorded memory.  Temperatures are regularly in the 100’s with lots of bright burning sun, and they barely bother to dip below 80 at night.  The weather men have their work cut out for them each night to prevent mass insurrection with each forecast of high heat, lots of sun and no rain in sight.   September, though, holds hope of a break, even just a few degrees so that we can say that our high temperature was in the two digits.

by RL Johnson, via Creative Commons

When I was growing up in Maryland, the arrival of September also heralded change.  Except for us in the northeast, it marked the beginning of the end of summer.  The local pool closed its doors for the season the day after Labor Day while the kids simultaneously started back at school.  We all knew that the end of September would be a lot colder than the beginning and the days would be shorter.

Down south, though, September is welcomed more for its promise than its foreboding.  A cool front bringing temperatures in the low 90s is celebrated like the birth of a child. And, while I came to Texas six years ago to escape a hurricane, I now get inappropriately excited when a tropical storm is anywhere near the Gulf because it means that we might just get that deluge that we so need.

So September, welcome. May you bring some sense back into the weather here in Texas and try to reason with Mother Nature on why it is just not natural to have 100+ heat in the month where fall decorations are already popping up in my local grocery store.