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The end of summer comes with the autumnal equinox, not for a few weeks yet, but we know the true end of summer comes this weekend. There will be cookouts and last of the season swim parties, or perhaps a round of chores we’ve put off for months. This is how my family usually spent Labor Day. My grandmother, the fun one, might fire up the grill at the last minute, whip up some macaroni salad and Kool-Aid, but that was about all any of us were up for.

Summer, for all its bright promise in June, ends in a different way than other seasons. It gets its plug pulled, finally and for all. We decide when it is over.

And just like that, it is.

We will have summer days into September, some of the best summer days, really. Once, in college, I spent a warm Saturday floating all day on Barren River. It was hot and sunny, and we were bored and avoiding the library, the test coming up, something horrible and academic. We stopped at a small bait shop, already sleepy and dusty, bought the last of the blow-up rafts and drifted and laughed the afternoon away, buoyed by the delicious feeling we were getting away with something.

I took this summer harder than most. But I received more gifts, too, because I had visitors. The hummingbird seems mythical to me, illusive, skittery, darting as it does in such a way I never quite know if I have seen it or not.

In the past I have tried hummingbird feeders, but give up changing the nectar after a couple of weeks, and then I have the notion of killing them hanging heavy over my head for the rest of the summer. Better to throw out handfuls of zinnia seeds. In addition to being the happiest flower created, the hummingbirds adore them. They flit between my zinnias and my neighbor’s butterfly bush that peeks just over the high fence between our yards.

All summer, leading with their little chests, the hummingbirds have come to feast.

Finches, too. Yellow ones, nesting in the bowl of the porch ceiling fan. Red ones, enjoying an unmolested meal on the squirrel-proof feeder. Flying off to tell their buddies, returning for more thistle, making not even the tiniest of messes.

The bats, too, circle, just as night falls, and just high enough they are hard to make out against the darkening sky. The Japanese beetles came, the drunk uncle at the party, and they were the boorish creatures they always are. Eating that which they should leave alone. Coupling in the morning, out in broad daylight, unperturbed when I shake the branches of my crepe myrtle.

Brazen, destructive, not the carnival ride they were back in the day when we called them June bugs and tied thread to their legs and let them buzz-saw in circles above our heads.

I used to feel guilty about that. No more.

I am winter girl. I’ve been draped, after all. My colors are white and black and jewel tones, warm and vibrant. I have loved my riotous garden, untidy but cheerful. Now, though, I think about the symmetry of plots prepared for winter. The great clean out, pruned lavender, woody plants uprooted, showing the crepe myrtle how to be a tree, new manure to perk up tired herb beds.

Because I have decided there are just a few more days of summer. Some stolen moments, perhaps, here and there. An afternoon ball game that sunburns my nose and surprises me. A day too hot to work in the yard, but a pleasant evening to watch those bats. No white after Labor Day, but holding onto my linen for a while longer.

The rolling end of summer is upon us, each with our own calendar, marked and underlined, for the farewell of one season and the greeting of another.

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