Dog days....

Here it is... August already.... Where has the time gone? All the things that keep me busy makes the time go that much faster.

The start of August marks the progression towards that part of summer that I'm not terribly enthusiastic about. I'm pretty ambivalent about late summer. It's usually hot, humid, what rain we get comes in storms. By this time the birds are mostly done singing their songs, so all you hear in the air is the sound of insects-- crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas. While the trees and grass might be green, I get a sense of impending doom. Is it because I know autumn can't be far away? Maybe it's the slow death as things start to turn brown, burned by the sun and the lack of a quenching rain.

They call late summer the Dog Days of summer. Did you know that it's because it's the time when the star Sirius is at its brightest? Sirius is also called the Dog Star. And in the Harry Potter books, Sirius Black can turn in to a dog. Coincidence? I don't think so.