It’s 63 degrees outside at 3pm today. Nina tells me from her house down valley that it’s snowing on the peaks. And my tomatoes and zucchini have taken on their late-summer clothing — swaths and swaths of clear plastic sheeting. I’ll probably be able to get a few tomatoes to ripen — last year they all ripened in my basement while I was in France. It may freeze tonight, so this afternoon, I was the Basil Fairy — running around town delivering big ziploc baggies of basil to various friends.

It happens every year about the first of August — we wake up one morning and the smell of fall is in the air.