How Hot Is It?

This is the time of year when Texans yearn for the First Cold Front of Fall. Oh, we all know the actual first day of fall most likely won’t amount to much. We’ll go on having 100+ degree days through October. But a cold front will be at least a possibility, and sooner or later, it’ll happen. We’ll get little respites from the heat—brisk, refreshing mornings that make the horses frisk about in the pasture and the cats on the porch sit up and take notice. The heat’ll be back with a vengeance within a day or two, but it will have lost its grip. The cool spells will get longer and cooler. Leaves will turn yellow and drop off the trees, and it’ll be something other than drought stress making them do it. The lush, waist-high weeds that crowd around me during my trips to the compost pile will wither into the spare stalks that always make me want to get out my sketchbook.

We’re still a ways off from all that as of yet. Right now, it’s so hot that the cats have been seen panting in the shade of the wraparound porch. The dogs make wallows in the cool(er) dirt in the crawlspace under the house, picking up plenty of grit in their coats to be deposited later indoors. The herbage in the goat paddock is so high and robust that the goats can’t see each other if they’re more than a few feet apart. Drama Goat, always prone to getting lost from the other goats, just stands there and yells, and I can’t say that I blame her.

But relief is not far off. One day, mere weeks from now, I’ll be in my study, cozy in the knowledge that a cold front is in the forecast. Out of nowhere, the metal roof will rumble like thunder overhead, a sudden stream of dead leaves will blow past my window, and I’ll think, “Yep, there it is.” Within minutes, the temperature will drop twenty degrees. By evening, I’ll actually need a hoodie.

Hang in there, Drama Goat. Cooler days are coming. The dense herbage in the pasture will give way to sere brown grasses, and when you look up from your browsing, you’ll be able to see all your friends and relations, enjoying the fall with you.