![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/1st-Grade.jpg\" "\\"1st")
<\/a>the next big thing to happen is the ringing of school bells.<\/p>\n(that’s me, second from the left on the first row)<\/p>\n
The school bell has long ago faded and even the summer pace of work is gone, for me now almost 25 years. \u00a0Yet that sense that summer has reached its climax and now speeds its way toward the denouement still sends its signals. \u00a0The garden does pick up speed now with plants maturing, more and more vegetables ripening, fruit, too. \u00a0The arc of the garden though does not know Labor Day, does not have a building and a bell in its lexicon. \u00a0It knows the growing season, the gradual warming, then cooling of the daytime and nighttime temperatures.<\/p>\n
With Latin on hold I’ve begun to work outside a bit more regularly since I no longer feel as crunched for time in the mornings. \u00a0That means I can participate more fully in the garden’s life. \u00a0Many garden plants, especially vegetables, run through their entire life cycle during the growing season, going from seed to stalk to leaves to fruit, then senescence. \u00a0The school year that I inherited was one sensitive to this rhythm. \u00a0It allowed the kids to come home from school during the months their labor was crucial on the farm, during the height of the growing season. \u00a0The need for that passed long ago as the number of family farms has steadily declined.<\/p>\n
Yet like my inner sense of time the school system continues on, its memory of the days of the family farm institutionally intact.<\/p>\n
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Summer \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Solstice Moon July 4th is the midpoint of summer for me. \u00a0It’s not in terms of the calendar or meteorology, but in my visceral … Continue reading The Beginning of the End of Summer<\/span>