A ROSE IN SEPTEMBER...

I have always loved September; it's my favorite month.

I chose September for my wedding day---September 10 of 1960---and then I had good reason to love September even more.

September is fine wine; it is the year matured. Blue and gold and green, it opens up my eyes and elevates my spirits. It contains the autumn equinox, whose changes seem to beg for my attention.

September sunrise turns the dew-clad spider webs to neon and creates a host of other-worldly morning mists and shadows.

September skies are brilliant, and its sunny afternoons turn fragrant with the ripening apples, wild berries, grapes and grasses. The changing angle of the sun throws golden light onto the forests and lays a mellow hand on fields and lawns and gardens.

September is a time of quickened step, big yellow buses, high-school bands and football games, and roadside stands heaped high with produce. Birds and mammals congregate and chatter, and so do school kids. Corn stalks begin to dry and soon will rattle in the fields. Swirling breezes stir up dust-devils, and wildflowers lend nobility to dusty roadsides.

Eash day sinks a little sooner into darkness, but sunsets are spectacular. The nights are cool and quieter and soon grow pungent with the dying vegetation. The moonlight is the most benevolent of any of the twelve moons of the year, and it seems to add an extra sheen upon the night-time trees.

A whiff of distant smoke is all it takes to conjure up for me my autumn nights of childhood, when the signature aroma was the smell of happy campfires and burning leaves.

If I've had complaint about September, it might have been the threat of early frosts to kill the flowers in my gardens. But even that no longer bothers me; it gives me, after all, a seasonal respite from lawn and garden work.

And as the autumn of my human years advances, that respite is very much appreciated.