Summer’s End

The FXBG ADVANCE WEDNESDAY 7/29/26 AFTERNOON READ

By Donnie Johnston, ADVANCE COLUMNIST

Dan Dennis/Unsplash

Two days from now, summer will end.

I know the meteorologists say it doesn’t end until Aug. 31, and the calendar declares that Sept. 21 is the final day of summer.

For all intents and purposes, however, summer ends Friday.

It wasn’t always that way. When I was a child, August was just another hot, dry summer month. But in those days, school didn’t start until after Labor Day.

Now, school in my county starts Aug. 5. Not for new teachers or old teachers or 12-month personnel, but for students. Classes begin a week from today, even before tax relief for school supplies begins.

And when school starts, summer is over. Almost everyone, you see, is either a student, a parent, or a grandparent, and our American society is ruled by the lives and habits of children.

Why start school so early? So we can get it over with earlier. Still approximately nine months; still 180 days. We just want to hurry up the schedule for reasons that essentially make little sense. It is the same with starting classes at 7:30 instead of 9 a.m., which was traditional, or starting Sunday church services at 9 or 10 a.m. Begin early so we can hurry up and get it over with.

But all that is another column for another day.

You may not realize it, but your mindset will likely change Saturday, and you will go into fall mode. August has become the transition month that September traditionally was.

School is starting and pro football camps are underway. Exhibition games—high school, college, and pro—begin in August. The season that will conclude in the snow and cold of December and January will begin in 90-degree heat in less than a month.

The beginning of August affects the baseball season, too. The Major League trade deadline is Friday, which tells fans which teams have given up on the season eight weeks before it is officially over.

In July, no one bothered to check the wild card standings, but in August, after the top clubs strengthen their rosters, those three extra playoff berths become more and more important as fans look toward October.

The Atlantic hurricane season, which officially began June 1, ramps up in August, especially around the end of the month when low-pressure systems start coming off the west coast of Africa, and the water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico hits its peak.

Gardening season, at least for most of us, winds down in August. My garden is about shot. I have peppers, tomatoes, okra, and a few cantaloupes left, but everything else has petered out.

For the most part, it was a good year. I canned about 100 quarts of beans, enough pickled beets to last maybe two winters, and enough tomatoes to fill up all the jars I had left. My potatoes are dug, and while two April freezes cut my crop back, I have plenty for my needs. Should the worst come, I have enough food preserved to get me through the coldest winter.

Farmers will begin harvesting their final cutting of hay in August, and start making corn ensilage by the end of the month. The drought has hit some corn crops hard, but where the rains fell, it looks like it will be a good season.

With the crops all in, August was the month when country folks traditionally held church revivals and tent meetings as expressed in the Neil Diamond hit, “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show.”

The bucks start rubbing the velvet from their antlers in August, and the fawns start losing their spots and following their mothers everywhere, especially onto busy highways.

Resident geese, having lost their aerial mobility due to summer molting, get their wings back in August, just in time to forage the harvested cornfields.

The spring litters of foxes, coons, and coyotes are starting to hunt on their own in preparation of being kicked out of the den before winter.

By the end of the month, the dogwood leaves will redden, and the walnut leaves, now with a yellow tint, will begin falling.

Daylight shortens by more than an hour in August, and by the end of the month the sun will go down around 7:45 p.m.

Yes, August is a transitional month, and both humans and animals start looking toward autumn. But humans tend to rush the season far more than any of nature’s other creatures.

One final note. Do you realize that August is the only month without one single federal holiday?

That’s a fact.