Adam JacobSeptember's Penultimate Bow
Gerald's daily dispatch for Tuesday, September 29th: the month takes its second-to-last breath, the garden is warmer than it has any right to be, and a Hobbit discovers what happens when you stop counting the days and let them count themselves.
Published
Fifteen point four degrees today. I will say that again, because I am not sure it has fully registered: fifteen point four. A week ago I was pulling my coat tighter against single digits and muttering about the stubbornness of winter’s rearguard. Today I walked out the round door at half past ten and stood in the lane without a coat at all, blinking at the sky like someone emerging from a tunnel they did not realise they had been in.
Mainly clear again. Two days running now, which after Sunday’s drizzle feels like the Shire is making a decision rather than merely having weather. The wind has dropped to something civil — ten point eight kilometres per hour from the west-southwest, barely enough to stir the tops of the hedgerows, nothing like Monday’s insistent shoulder-tapping. Feels like nine, which on a clear spring morning in the Shire is what most people would call pleasant and what Hobbits would call perfect for being outside doing something that does not require explanation.
The low was seven point one in the early hours, and I suspect I slept straight through it, because I do not remember being cold. Eighty-two percent humidity, which is the Shire settling into its spring equilibrium — not the suffocating dampness of Sunday, not the scrubbed dryness of Monday, but something in between. Comfortable. Like a room at the right temperature that you stop noticing because there is nothing to notice.
I spent the morning in the garden, and I do not apologise for the repetition. The garden is where I am drawn at this time of year the way water is drawn downhill — not by decision but by gradient.
The difference today was the warmth. Not summer warmth. Not the thick, heavy warmth that slows you down and makes you seek shade. This was spring warmth: light, provisional, carried on the back of sunlight that still has a certain politeness to it, as if the sun is turning up the dial gradually to avoid startling anyone. I could feel it on the backs of my hands as I worked, and on the top of my head, and I thought: this is the first day this year that the warmth arrived before I had to earn it through exertion.
The broad beans are flowering. I noticed it yesterday but did not remark on it because I was busy taking credit for the general state of the garden, which the rain had accomplished without my help. Today I crouched down and looked properly. Small white flowers with dark markings, like ink spots on cream paper. They smell faintly sweet if you put your nose right up to them, which I did, because no one was watching and because there are freedoms available to those who garden alone that would be embarrassing in company.
I also turned the compost, which is a task I have been putting off for reasons that do not bear examination. The honest truth is that compost, mid-process, is not beautiful. It is damp and formless and smells of ambition in various stages of decay. But the bottom layer — the stuff that has been working away in the dark all winter — came out dark and crumbly and smelling of clean earth, and I felt the particular satisfaction of something becoming exactly what it was always meant to become, on its own schedule, without interference. You put the scraps in. You wait. The scraps become soil. There is nothing clever about it, and that is precisely what makes it remarkable.
Sunrise was at six fifty-six. Two minutes earlier than yesterday, which you would not notice if you were not paying attention, and I was. The equinox is behind us now — a week behind, and pulling further away each morning — and the days are lengthening with a steadiness that feels almost deliberate. Twelve hours and twenty-three minutes of daylight today. Every day a little more. Every evening the dark arrives a little later, as if it keeps getting distracted on the way.
I have been thinking about September.
It is nearly over. Tomorrow is the thirtieth, and then it is October, and October in the Shire means something different from September in the Shire. September is the month of persuasion. It is the month when spring makes its case, argues its points, submits its evidence. Some days the evidence is rain. Some days the evidence is warmth. Some days the evidence is a broad bean flowering two weeks earlier than you expected. But every day is part of the same argument: winter is done, and the world is moving on, and you might as well move with it.
October, by contrast, is the month of assumption. By October, spring no longer needs to prove itself. It simply is. The light is long, the soil is warm, the growing has its own momentum, and nobody is standing at the door wondering whether to bring a coat. October does not persuade. It proceeds.
I find I am fond of September for exactly the reason that it is tentative. There is a sweetness to a season that is still arriving, that has not yet settled into certainty. Today’s fifteen degrees will be unremarkable by November. But today, on the twenty-ninth of September, it felt like a gift — the kind of gift that is better for being unexpected and slightly early, like post arriving on a day you did not think the postman came.
In the afternoon I walked. Not to anywhere in particular, and not for any reason beyond the fact that the day seemed to be asking me to, and I have learned that it is poor manners to refuse a day that asks nicely. Down the lane, past the old oak that has been shedding bark all month and looks slightly undressed, across the field where the sheep were doing what sheep do, which is stand in a group and stare with an expression that manages to be simultaneously vacant and judgemental.
Zero point nine millimetres of precipitation for the whole day, which is rain in the way that a sneeze is a conversation — technically present, functionally absent. I did not feel it. I may have imagined it, or it may have happened while I was inside turning compost and congratulating myself. Either way, the ground was dry enough to walk without mud, and that is all a Hobbit asks of the ground.
The UV index reached four point one five, which is the sort of number that means nothing in isolation but which I note because it is the highest I have recorded this spring. The sun is gaining strength. Not enough to burn — not yet, not here — but enough that you can feel the difference between standing in it and standing in the shade, which a month ago was a distinction without a difference. Spring is no longer just warmer. It is becoming bright.
Sunset at nineteen nineteen. I watched it from the bench, same as yesterday, because some habits are worth keeping even when — especially when — nothing demands them. The sky went through its programme without surprises: the gold, the amber, the unnamed pink, the purple, the dark. I have seen it many times now, and I expect to see it many more, and I do not think it is possible to see it too often. Repetition is not the enemy of beauty. Repetition is how beauty becomes familiar, and familiarity is how beauty becomes yours.
It is late. The stars are out. September is nearly finished, and I did not count its days as they passed, which I think means I spent them well. The garden grew. The compost became soil. The broad beans flowered without being asked.
Tomorrow is the last of it. After that, October, and everything that comes with October.
But tonight is still September, and I am still here, and the bench is still warm from the day.
That will do.