Pumpkins!?

This evening when I went to the supermarket, there were large pumpkins sitting out front, waiting to be purchased and whisked home to sit on someone’s front porch. On September third! Surely it’s entirely too early for this. But there’s no question that once Labor Day is past, Maine goes into autumn mode. We’re still having warm days, but the humidity of deep summer has lessened (though it will undoubtedly rear its ugly head a time or two before disappearing altogether), and the evenings are pleasantly cool. There is even one tree on my commute to work that has been displaying more and more of its autumn foliage for several weeks. Obviously it’s got a gene loose, but any day now the other guys are going to hit the color switch, and things will start happening. And the season that is many people’s New England favorite will be in full swing.

A lot of people in Maine have vacation homes they call camps, though you and I would probably call them cottages or cabins. These are not usually fancy, and sometimes are only about an hour, maybe a couple of hours’ drive away. Their owners will often go up for a weekend, or a few days at a stretch. Folks are now starting to shut these up, and return to home base. This, too, seems way early to me. But life in Maine is so tuned to the seasons. Summer is the time to spend time “up at the camp.” Autumn is the time for pumpkins on the front porch (I always get a little one, and it sits inside my house), visiting apple orchards to pick a bag or two of McIntoshes or Cortlands. (I love to do this), and politics (Maine folk are very involved in local politics). Winter is the time for skiing, snow-mobiling, and shoveling, shoveling, shoveling. This last I do not love, but Mainers of all ages do it, grumbling about it while looking upon it as one of life’s givens. And spring is the time for grumbling about how long the winter has gone on, for rain and mud, for the coming of green, and flowers, for gardening. And then it’s summer and it’s time to open up the camp.

By the way, I recently realized that I made a mistake in my Note ‘And where were you born?’ I said that all the people who know me are five other people away from knowing one another (me being the first of the famous six degrees). But of course, they’re really only one person away from knowing one another, that person being me. Good grief. I’m surprised no one called me on this. But then, maybe no one’s reading...