Autumn arrives next week, but tell that to the crickets, which are chirping more slowly these days, and to the cicadas, which aren't chirping at all.
Working outside now, I glance up at the roses that twine on top of the pergola, a few of them in second bloom. I notice how thinned out they have become, how fragile.
It's still a humid, green world, but the edges are peeling away to reveal what's been hidden beneath all the time: the bare trunks of winter, the quiet sigh of fall.