JOY ALONG THE WAY: GET ME OUTTA HOT AUGUST

Finding joy along the way this August has required a little more effort because we've been preoccupied with the heat index and how to cope with it. It has been easy to think we are stuck in some hot, miasmic swamp with no sense of direction of how to get out. A quiver of A/Cs, fans, iced tea, cold showers, sliced cucumber sandwiches help.

For myself I've fashioned another arrow. It is looking for signs that the season really is moving along. The shortening of daylight hours is noticed, especially at dawn. Whereas the first streaks of sunshine actually came in through a north window just a few days ago, now that area is completely sunshine abandoned and the northeast window is the sunbeams' silent doorbell.

I walked by the dogwood trees on my way after a ripe tomato and saw that the little clusters of waxy berries have formed. They're called drupes. Seems a suitable name for this season. They aren't lacquer red yet, but they weren't even there a few weeks ago. I stopped long enough to count the number of these drupes in a cluster to see if there is any uniformity in number as there is in the always six-sided snowflake and the always five points of a sweet gum leaf, but there aren't. Any old number will do for the drupes -- 2, 3, 6, 8, 7.

The veins of a dogwood leaf, always seen better on the wrong side, as with any leaf, run more parallel to the center vein than other leaves I've ever examined. Why? I suppose that, like human thumbs prints, no two leaves are alike. In such things we still see through a glass darkly.

Tiny little acorns from the saw-toothed oak can be found here and there on the walkway. I don't know about this too-early abortive fall. Maybe the clusters are just too big and some of the weakest get crowded out, or maybe the squirrels who like to chew on these little nuggets cause some to fall. Anyway, the fact that acorns are forming is a sign that there is a coming way out of the August Heat Swamp.

Nowadays I always look up when I first step outside to see if I can spy a migrating Monarch butterfly. Haven't seen any yet, but down lower some are still flitting around as if they're making up their minds about which way to start out. I understand that those from the Midwest migrate to the Mexican border. That makes sense. Much nearer than Florida or the Monterey Peninsula where the eastern and western Monarchs go for the winter.

One day when I went for the early morning scrubbing of the birdbath, there was a blue jay feather floating on the remnants of water from the day before. Molting. That happens in the Fall!

I collect bird feathers that I run across from time to time for some little notional things. Stuck in a hedgeapple suspended from the porch roof keeps folks wondering if it is a witch doctor's sign. I just hope that none of the feathers I pick up are from endangered species. Might land in jail as I've recently read about in some publication.

Yesterday I stepped out onto the back porch and for some reason started making up words to a little tune I know, "Back Porch Dawn, what's that perfume you've got on?" It seems to have changed overnight from phlox to autumn clematis.

I walk around to the front and what do I see? Yellow school buses going by! Dismal Hot Swamp Days, you're on your way out. Pack your bags. See if you can catch up with the already departed martins and pass an eager, ahead of schedule Monarch.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.