Autumn announces its imminent arrival

September announced its arrival Tuesday with a cool front, a refreshing breeze and crystal blue sky. I tore myself away from this keyboard, from hunting for jobs and from writing and went out to breathe in the crisp air with that taste of Saturday afternoon college football crowds and to do a little work in the yard. At lunchtime, I sat on the deck to eat a sandwich, feel the breeze and listen to the music of the wind chimes.

Early this morning, Orion the Hunter twinkled in a sky not quite black but not yet blue. Sirius, the dog star, trailed behind him, just above the treetops, and the temperature in the 50s found me in long sleeves for the first time on our early-morning walks. The winter sky has always been my favorite. Bright, easily identifiable Orion dominates the southward view in winter, when lower humidity clears away the haze and sets the stars ablaze against the blackest background. Orion faces Taurus the Bull's bright V shape and the faint Pleiades, whose cluster of stars becomes a collection of innumerable sparkling gems when seen through a low-power telescope. Sirius the Dog Star trails behind Orion and sets the standard for brightness — anything brighter is not a star but a planet. This morning, Venus was hanging low in the east, about 30 degrees from Sirius, its glittering brightness like a spotlight in the sky announcing the imminent arrival of the sun, which will fade all these points of light to nothingness as the whole sky turns bright blue from horizon to horizon.

The calendar says three more weeks of summer before the sun crosses the celestial equator, heading south toward the winter solstice in darkest December. But the sky and the stars and the air and the breeze tell me that autumn has arrived. It's here. The tomato plants are withering; the day lilies have gone dormant; the nandina's berries are growing red. Summer is gasping its last hot breaths, and fall — refreshing, cooling, invigorating fall — is at the threshold.