Twelve Moons of the Year. September 03.

Significant sentences from The Twelve Moons of the Year by Hal Borland, a chronology of the New England seasons. September 03.

"But to the cold-blooded ones, such as insects, who are at the mercy of the sun rather than their own inner fires for life and energy, time begins to run out when nights turn frosty." p. 256.

"You may hear it in the evening, in the slow tempo of the stridulant ones, the katydids and the crickets that were so insistent only a few weeks ago." p. 256.

"...the grasshopper has no hop in him till almost noon." p. 256.

"Briefly, when the sun has asserted itself by early afternoon, life is almost normal. Flies buzz, ants hurry and late gnats dance like lively motes in the mild air. Evening nears and the buzz, the haste and the dancing are at an end." p. 256.

"But the cold-blooded children of summer, the insect hordes, have had their day in the sun." p. 256.

"The sun now rises almost due east, sets almost due west...the week of the autumn equinox when, briefly, daylight and darkness are almost equal." p. 257.

"The urgency of growth is ended for another year, but life itself is hoarded, in root and bulb and seed and egg." p. 257.

"One wonders why the legend-makers never gave sumac credit for lighting the autumn flame in the forest." p. 258.

"Spring was all eagerness and beginnings, summer was growth and flowering...autumn is the achievement summarized, the harvested grain, the ripened apple, the grape in the wine press...the bright leaf in the woodland...the froth of asters at the roadside." p. 259.

"The cricket is a small, black, ambulatory noise surrounded by a sentimental aura; ...lives in the open fields, but its favorite habitat is behind a couch or under a bookcase in a room where somebody is trying to read." p. 260.