Time is short. We see it in the shifting colors of trees, the flights of birds gathering along the power lines in preparation for migration. This week some transient hawks, moving south for the winter, became aware of a local overpopulation of squirrels among a treasure trove of pecans and acorns that have been falling with the summer leaves. Now these winged hunters, dropping from the skies, are busy thinning the hordes of poaching bushy tails as best they can.

We have been losing daylight fast, for on this Sunday we will be allotted but 11 hours and 26 minutes of precious sunshine (assuming the weather cooperates), with daylight falling off at a rate of about two minutes each passing day. This compares with those lush times, during the mid-summer peak, when there were 15 hours and 17 minutes of sunlight available for us to squander as we chose. What has happened to those long bucolic summer days, the casual weeks and drawn out months of the past? Time, as the older heads among us know, seems to shrink with the passing of each year.

Perhaps we should demand that our elected officials decree there will be more vacations in the fall – when the heat of the summer cools down but while the ocean waters are still warm and the fish come awake. These are days that make one desire to go out and watch the leaves change color, the grapes ripen, the figs sweeten and the birds, following the example of the already departed hummingbirds, preen their flight feathers, assemble their friends and prepare, just in time, for their annual trip to their winter vacation grounds.