One of the things that I missed when I wasn’t living in New England was the seasons. If you live here long enough, you start to figure out what the early signs are for the changing seasons. August is still summer here, but it is late summer as opposed to July, high summer. Some things that we associate strongly with New England summers belong to August: sweet corn, peaches, tomatoes (everyone wants to push them earlier…but they just don’t). Other things belong to fall, white and blue wood asters, onions, apples.
The last 24 hours have shown both of August’s faces. Yesterday dawned hot, muggy and with building clouds. The end of a spell of weather that makes one want to stay far away from New England in the summer. Everything sticky feeling with humidity, but everything wilting because there was no water. By noon, the wind was rising and the clouds darkening, the cats were edgy, the birds suddenly active. Mid-afternoon the thunderstorm rolled through, the sort of big thunderstorm that August creates, you know it is coming for hours and then there is cold rain with wind. The night cleared, the crickets were in full song by the thousand thousands. And today, partly cloudly, a cool morning, with the high dry wind and sun, about seventy at noon. No bugs, no humidity. A day when it feels like you could do anything and you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Acair Fearann 
Having ended up in the California Bay Area late in life (as opposed to Great-Aunt Helen, who got a good early start on this area) I have found the “change of seasons” here to be completely bewildering. Not at all like Esperanza’s (which I remember with great fondness, hot, humid summer days aside). Nor like any other place I’ve lived. Nothing I’d call “winter” (well, if you are lucky you can catch a sight of snow on the ridge east of Oakland). And nothing I’d really call summer; starting almost every day with heavy, high fog that suddenly clears in about five minutes in the early afternoon to bright sunshine isn’t summer. (And where does the moisture in that fog go? The afternoons can be hot, but aren’t humid.)
It’s like moving to an alien planet. And yes, I’d love to have a good New England fall day! (Or Minnesota one, or New Mexican one. . .)
Living in the midwest, there was almost always a point, every year, sometime around mid August, when the weather was hot and completely summery, and still, somehow, I felt a turning in the air. Some promise that fall was around the corner. And then the next day it would be gone, but I’d be thinking about dry leaves and pumpkins and a slight cold wind starting to blow. As mom says, we don’t get that out here, really.