SEPTEMBER

This is my favourite time of the year. The leaves haven't started to turn yet, but the feel of fall is in the air. I don't know how many times I've tried to describe what makes autumn so special to me - it never seems to go down on paper very well. The smells of ripe apples on the trees, wheat at the peak of perfection, the almost wine-like sent of canola pouring from the combine ... if the reader has nothing to compare it to, how are they going to know what I'm talking about?

And there's the sounds of fall ... grain augers filling bins, harvesting equipment going non-stop to bring the crop in, and the sound that grasshoppers make in the dry grass - nobody has ever come up with a word to describe that one. I think to call it a "sizzle" is the closest I can come up with, although it's very soft and soothing.

The sky at this time of the year goes an incredible "September" blue. I know, I know, there's a perfectly scientific explanation for that - it would have something to do with the angle of the sun's rays through the atmosphere - but to me it's just the perfect backdrop colour for geese to fly across in their giant wedge formations.

There's nothing better than a meal served off the endgate of a halfton truck in the middle of a field - golden crop laying at your feet, a breeze keeping the insects at bay, and little kids insisting on pouring their daddy one more cup of iced tea - each. And, at night fall, watching the combine (a machine so huge it could pass for a small house) gracefully gliding from swath to swath, dipping its header, making its turns in wide swoops, all of its actions enhanced by the lights that twinkle from its frame. It always makes me think of a grande old dame in a ballroom doing a stately waltz.

The other night one of our neighbours phoned to tell me to check the stars out that night. She had heard that there was supposed to be a special alignment of planets to see. She called back shortly afterward and said that she had got her information wrong, and not to bother. There would be nothing to see. I decided that I should check it out, just in case - I sincerely hope she did too. She had been right- there was nothing unique happening in the sky that night, but it sure as heck was special anyway. The sky was so clear it felt as if I could reach up and touch the stars. The Milky Way was there in all its powdery glory. The constellations brilliant in the dark sky. It seems ridiculous that I had to be told to go outside and look at such a treasure - why am I not out there every night? People in the cities have no idea what they're missing - they really need to drive outside the city limits from time to time, just to get an idea of where we are in the Universe.

Harvest is getting very close to being done. We finished more than a week ago and Glen has been baling more straw nad cattle feed since then. We've brought the young herd home from 21 and will be mixing the two herds after the weekend. The bulls have yet to make each other's acquaintence so there'll be a few noisey days as they try to tell each other just how tough they are, and things will settle down again. The Farmer's Almanac says this winter is going to be a nasty, cold and snowy affair. Usually we don't pay that book much mind, but this year other things are giving the warning more merit. Mother Nature is someone you don't ignore and she has her creatures getting on with fall preparations much earlier than usual - geese are already flocking up almost a month early, crows too. And the humming birds that usually stay a week into September have been gone for 10 days already. I don't know what that means, but it doesn't seem like good news.