Labor maketh the harvest ...

Here it is: Labor Day weekend.

This is the weekend when we take three days to pay homage to 90-plus-degree weather and 90-plus-percent humidity.

This is the weekend we act like mosquitoes are our friends and sunburn is a grooming preference.

This is the weekend when municipal swimming pools, which were opened on Memorial Day weekend when it was too cold to swim, are shut down even though there's at least another month left of warm-enough-to-swim weather.

This is the weekend when young students celebrate their last days of summer vacation -- even though most schools opened days ago in spite of a 1987 Missouri law prohibiting the opening of school before Labor Day.

This is the weekend when lots of people spend all day Saturday driving somewhere and all day Monday getting back. What they do on Sunday remains, for the most part, a complete mystery.

This is the holiday when we don't stay up till midnight, don't give candy to our sweethearts, don't honor our mothers or fathers, don't blow out candles, don't visit the graves of loved ones, don't shoot off fireworks, don't eat turkey and don't give presents.

Nor do we labor.

This is the weekend when we fill up on hot dogs and potato chips so we'll have enough stamina for the district fair and all those fall festivals.

This is the weekend that reminds us that October, one of the few truly decent months, is only 30 days away.

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Last week I took my mother and an aunt to St. Louis to see another aunt who has been in a nursing home for a couple of years.

On the way to St. Louis, during the nursing home visit and on the drive back, I listened -- and occasionally contributed -- to a nonstop conversation about this and that and the other.

It was on the way home that my aunt mentioned the protests against President Bush's new policy on national forests. She worried that the environmentalists were keeping decent men -- those who work by the sweat of their brow -- from their jobs.

To my aunt, idleness is the work of Beelzebub. Therefore, protesters who get in the way of an honest day's work must be little devils.

That led to a discussion of endangered species. I mentioned the chimney sweep who visited our house last spring and said he would first have to check for birds nesting inside the chimneys. If there were active nests, he would have to wait until the birds left for the season. It's the law, he said.

You can imagine how that went over with my mother and my aunt.

My aunt contributed that some folks somewhere were importing purple martins to eat mosquitoes and lessen the risk of West Nile virus.

(All of these topics are connected by a slim thread, if you're really paying attention.)

For a few moments, there was actual silence in the car.

Then my aunt said something like this: If those purple martins eat all the mosquitoes, I guess the government will put mosquitoes on some sort of list too.

I don't think I've ever heard a clearer summation of how government works.

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Have you noticed an abundance of butterflies this year?

Our yard is full of fluttering creatures of several sizes and a variety of yellows, blacks, blues and browns.

My wife and I don't know if it's because of this year's weather pattern or because of the flowers we planted or because natural predators aren't around or what. Maybe all of the above.

But it certainly has been enjoyable.

In addition to all our regular feathered friends, this year we have dozens of butterfly newcomers. It's hard to imagine some of them will miraculously fly on fragile wings to sunny California or even Mexico.

Bon voyage.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.