Summer’s end approaching, happy days
On the Cape this is the last week of summer meaning the last week when gridlock is everywhere, when it takes an extra ten minutes to half an hour to get destinations we normally reach in fifteen or twenty minutes. When things we use year-round suddenly disappear from grocery shelves. When everybody you ever met in your life off-Cape is here wanting to visit and never understanding you’re not on vacation like them. When the internet inexplicably turns into a waiting game and your computer and cell phone go wonky because twenty times the number of people normally using the services here are all on line or trying to get there. When going out to eat requires the kind of planning that generally goes into a top end jewelry heist.The unofficial local holiday is the day after Labor Day. Oh, we have visitors and people who own second homes here on the shoulder season, but they tend to be quieter, less crazy on the highway, more into normal Cape life, more respectful of the environment. Next week every local person I meet will be extrafriendly, happy, outgoing. We get our town back. Yes, a lot of people I know are dependent on tourism to survive, but that doesn’t mean they are not happy when the flood tide of demand ebbs and they can do something beside work seven days a week.We canned our final requirement of tomato sauce this week and I started tarragon vinegar and then chive blossom vinegar [have to pick more chive blossoms 
today, as that’s one of our most used vinegars]. Today I’m drying cayenne peppers and freezing bell peppers. I have to thin the lettuce, endive and escarole I started two weeks ago and plant some parsley to replace the plants the heat decimated.We’re picking a lot of flowers for the house: marigolds, roses, phlox, dahlias.Some wild loosestrife has planted itself along a fence. I’ll keep an eye on it. I know it’s invasive but it makes a lovely bouquet with white phlox. The catbirds have been taunting the cats through the screens on the sunporch. Drives the cats wild. Also another cat has been hanging around, obviously a female who belongs to a summer person as she is wearing a bell. A female doesn’t annoy the male cats the way an invading male does. They seem mostly just mildly interested at the windows watching.The Friends of the Council on Aging, of which I’m the veep, raises money for programs with restaurants taking part between the night of Labor Day and Columbus Day. They choose a night and donate part of their food revenue from that date to us. So Labor Day night I’ll be eating with friends at the Bookstore restaurant that kicks off the fund raising. Friday night we had friends over for a wonderful supper. Stayed up way way too late and today I’m zonkered. But it was lively, good discussions, good communication.I wrote three poems this week, but that was it. It’s hard to say where the week went except for harvest work. We’re trying to figure out what to do with the floor downstairs in the kitchen and diningroom. It’s forty year old slate and looking dirty all the time and dreary. We have begun exploring options. That will go on for a couple of weeks of investigation.
I’m one of those rare people [although not so rare on the outer Cape] who get really tired of summer and for whom fall is my favorite season. Most years it stays warmish here until Thanksgiving and the garden work is pleasant again. It’s beautiful and we have it all more to ourselves. We even get to the beach occasionally in September and early October.