We had an unexpectedly productive weekend, which involved a lot of exercise (swimming, water aerobics, biking, hiking and ice skating) and yard work. It�s suddenly starting to look like fall. The summer flowers are starting to look tired and raggedy. The berries on the leather-leaf vibernum are starting to turn red, as are the leaves of the maple-leaf vibernum, which look like a flame outside my kitchen window for most of the month of September. The branches of the crabapples are bending low over the driveway under the weight of their copious fruit. Yesterday we went to the nursery for chrysanthemums. I filled the planter on the porch with yellow ones, lined with red and green-leaved coleus. I cut back the mint and what was left of the bleeding heart in the front-most bed and planted a couple of burgundy mums thee. We filled planters in the back, one with sedums, turning red and yellow, another with purple mums and pale sweet potato vine, and a third with a leftover mum and ornamental kale and peppers. These last two are on the balcony of my summer office, where I am writing at this moment. It suddenly feels like a very pleasant room out here, just weeks before it�s time to vacate for the year.

This is the first time I�ve been out here in while. For a few weeks it was too hot. Then there was the decaying skunk, which made anything outdoors quite unpleasant. We finally called in an expert and paid too much money for someone to pry up the boards of the deck and remove the rotting, maggoty, reeking corpse. But then, how much is too much money for a job like that, really? I mean, we could have done it ourselves. It wasn�t a particularly hard job from the standpoint of expertise. But I�m not sure I could have done it without vomiting. The stench alone made me nauseous. I�m glad I didn�t have to actually see what was causing it.

But much of the wildlife is a pleasure at this time of year. The birds are coming back to the feeders. From where I�m sitting, I can see a group of wrens and sparrows bathing in the stream. They hop down into the water then come up on the bank, give their feathers an indignant shake, and then flutter up to the low branches of the tree overhanging the spring, where they spread out their wings to dry. The cardinals do the same routine in pairs, but they prefer to dry themselves on the benches of the sunny octagon piece of deck that protrudes from the back of our house. And last night, as I was folding laundry in my bedroom, I heard a storybook version of an owl. He must have been sitting in the tree outside the window, the same one I�m sitting under now, although it was too dark to see him. �who, who-who-who,� he said every 20 seconds or so until he got tired or bored and flew away. I heard his wings flapping in the dark.

While the plants seem old and tired, there is new energy in the animals. The squirrels and chipmunks are positively frenetic. The chipmunk who has been casing my tomatoes turns out not to be after the tomatoes themselves but the tiny piece of land they stand on. He�s been burying acorns in the pot. I keep tossing them over the edge of the porch, but he persists in putting them back. We don�t see the deer much in the fall, though. They seem to melt into the forest in late August. They�ll return in winter when we see them peeling the bark off small trees and rubbing their antlers against larger ones.

We are engaging in our own brand of autumnal industry known as the back-to-school season. AJ and his dad are out shopping for school clothes. Later this week I�ll take AJ for a haircut. I myself am contemplating my teaching wardrobe and putting the finishing touches on my syllabus. I have been scanning the weather reports in Bangkok, where my brother lives, for any sign of change, but almost every day it is 90 degrees. I wonder what it�s like to go through the motions of the seasonal changes without the change part. I would miss it, I think. No, I know I would.

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