September the First.

Three weeks to the day of Rosh Hashanah is an auspicious way to start a month. The season as a whole, really. It's not summer right now, no matter what produce I can find in the markets - it hasn't been for a while now, I just haven't admitted it yet. This year it ended for me on the 18th, waking up the morning after a big gullywasher cleaned out the last of the lingering humidity and giving me two weeks of the kind of days that wind up in movies and on postcards. And now it's September, with fall officially beginning.

Yes, that was the day after the Tom Cruise retrospective wrapped.

I've still got some cherries and rhubarb and plums in my fridge, and a quarter of a honeydew melon. The melon and cherries won't last much longer. But I'm not cooking with pumpkin until October, if I can help it.