September here in the valley is a schizophrenic month. You don’t know if each day will be a T-shirt or sweatshirt experience. One day you’re rocking the A/C, the next thinking about the furnace or the fireplace to warm things up.
The one constant is that the leaves start to change. This year is supposed to be an early one for that.
The water levels in the Mighty Mississippi are quite low this time of year – especially around the traditionally rocky spots like the Blakeney rapids. The photo above is from 2007, as I can’t get out there this year due to bridge construction and a closed road.
It is definitely a September sort of spot. The river can’t make up its mind where to go.
The Mississippi eventually gets straightened out, just as the weather does near the end of the month. Goodbye summer heat!
September – especially after Labour Day – was a transitional time for close to 50 years for Maria and me. Not so much anymore – although the grandkids are back in school now, and Sarah and Dave are changing their home/office arrangements from 2 days to 3 days commuting in. We have one niece starting a new accounting job, another launching a career as a lawyer, and a third moving to the UK to study in London. A nephew just started at the University of Guelph. And to top it all off, Maria’s mother is getting set to move to a retirement home at age 94. So change swirls around us.
I’d like to end this rather depressing post with a couple of even older photos. These images are from 2005. This scene takes me back to the 1960s when we used to go swimming in a lovely lake that feeds the Mississippi River. This is more than 60 years ago now.
As Kierkegaard once famously said: “Life must be lived forward, but understood backward.” He was a September kind of guy, methinks.
