Indian Summer

The weatherman tells me I can expect an end to the lovely Indian Summer we have had. Is it coincidental that it comes over the Thanksgiving holiday and remains just almost until the end of this November? Is that how the first Thanksgiving was enjoyed? With unexpected warmth, and delicious promises that held no inkling of the harsh cold winter that lay ahead.

In some minds these variances might seem cruel, but I think of them as things which hold us over and give us just that much more of pleasantness to remember on howling nights, and in blustery snows. There is something in the human heart that collects such warm memories against the hungry days of our souls. And Indian Summer is just such a lagniappe.

Tomorrow, they say, will be warm and partly sunny. I plan to walk about in my garden, and prune back some shrubs that lean a bit too far into the driveway. But I think that is only an excuse to make sure I spend time in what little is left of mild weather here in Ohio. The January thaw is nothing like this, even with similar warm temperatures. Winter hasn’t really touched us yet, and we are far away from the spring we look forward to all winter. Indian Summer is our ending place, but it is a pleasant and lovely one. I close my mental garden book, and center around the fireside of Christmas, then I will open the book again in January with dreams of catalog illusions. That is a funny thought to me: January as the gardener’s dreambook, noting the symbols and hopes of the coming season. Something to look back on and to guide me when I wake up to the garden of Spring.

Spring seems so far away right now.

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