The Bru Diaries- Late Summer

August is kind of like Sunday- just like you know that the weekend is coming to an end, when August rolls around, you know that summer is on its way out, too. I always find this time of year kind of bittersweet.After the dry heat of June, July was a wet blanket in more ways than one. Finally, in August, the heat returned with a fiery vengeance that lasted more than half the month.

Earlier in the summer, there were these fields of purple flowers. It was breathtaking, like a sea of violet, rustling in the breeze, filling the air with lavender, the scent of summer. Now instead, there are sunflowers popping up here and there, swaying rhythmically, heads turned to the sun as if in prayer. Their mustard-yellow petals are almost too bright, especially under dark thunderclouds that seem to gather many afternoons. The countryside still bursts with life; crickets, birds and butterflies tangled with the long grass and ragworts, growing rife and unruly. Haybales are rolled and waiting, and the sun rises later and sets sooner, so that I am still outside when it gets dark, and tiny bats fight for airspace above the garden.

Normally it would soon be time for school again, or university, or work. But this year is a bit different for me. Which gives me more time to think. Which I do, on long bike rides, as the morning sun casts long shadows over the golden fields, and birds fly en masse over head, already starting on their winter migrations.

And my mind drifts, like the light clouds overhead. Between the good, the bad, the in-between. Melancholy, reflected in the burnt out fields and dying flowers. Joy, in the darting sparrows and swooping swallows. And hope, in the dancing butterflies.

Butterflies. For me, from now on,  summer will be all about the butterflies.