Summer Into Fall

I am not a good summer person. I like the idea of summer - blue skies, green grass, long, sunny days - iced tea, lemonade, baseball games - but the reality includes heat, humidity and bugs, which I don't do well. I like fall - cooler, less humid weather, the bugs start disappearing. But fall always seems like the end of something to me, in spite of the fact that football season has begun again, breeding groups will go together soon and with that, looking forward to new lambs in the spring. So there is always that touch of melancholy that comes with the last home Brewer game (last night), the first cold, windy day (today), the change of the woods from shades of green to autumn tones -

I think the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, former commissioner of baseball, summed it up pretty well, when he wrote this about baseball:

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."