Sunday afternoon/September syndrome

When I was younger, I had a difficult time enjoying Sunday afternoons because I was so aware that the next day was Monday and the weekend would be over. The implied understanding here is that I wasn’t too crazy about Monday, for various reasons, which is certainly not a unique phenomenon.

For so many, Monday seems to represent leaving your freedom—your energy autonomy—behind and moving back into servitude—be it school or a job—basically, any situation where someone else sets your schedule. During much of college I didn’t like Mondays because it meant my weekend with my boyfriend in another town would soon be over and it would be most of a week before I’d see him again. I forgot to have fun in the moment because I knew it would all change soon.

I wonder how many perfectly lovely Sundays I tainted by grieving the loss of it in advance?

Why is this coming up now? Because it is September, and the garden is looking fabulous, and I know that Jack Frost’s first appearance is just around the corner. “BE HERE NOW!” I command myself as I look out over the garden, watching a hummingbird sip nectar from the Sunset Hyssop, our garden a few weeks’ respite from its migration from a summer in the mountains to winter in the tropics. “Enjoy it fully while it lasts!” I say to the part of me that doesn’t want the hummer to move on—or the season. How silly it seems to allow the knowing that the garden will soon go dormant, and that I will be huddling indoors, to impact my pure enjoyment of its perfection now!

While I was in the garden picking Sweet 100 tomatoes today, I was contemplating the news that Steve Irwin, “The Crocodile Hunter,” left this plane of reality today by being stung in the heart by a stingray off the Great Barrier Reef in his beloved Australia . I often cringed when the man deliberately provoked animals to get a rise out of them in the name of showmanship—but I always admired his full-speed-ahead, live-each-day-as-if-it’s-your-last gusto. He definitely knew passion, seemed always to be living in the moment, and did not seem to spend any time at all backing down on life because it might be over soon! I’d be willing to bet that yesterday, if he had known it was to be his last full day on Earth, he’d not have wasted much if any of it thinking about how it was all about to be over.

If tomorrow turned out to be my last day on Earth, how very annoyed I might be if I had not drunk deeply of the September garden magic because my time-linear, past-experience-oriented ego mind was so busy dreading the weeks ahead when it would all be different!

If you look at the top left of the large plant with the stalks of peachy flowers (Sunset Hyssop), you'll see an emerald green hummingbird:

In case you don't have superhero vision, and couldn't see it in the photo above, here's a zoom of the hummer:

A little funny--I had said to Rick after posting the entry, "Too bad the hummer NEVER comes to this side of the hyssop (he usually stays on the side opposite where we are). And when I was outside a little later, the hummer zoomed up and hovered exactly in front of where I was standing with the camera as if to refute me!