Shorter days....

It's happening. I went to a late matinee yesterday and when the show was over I readied myself for the spotlight of summer waiting to greet me on the other side of the theatre door. I dug my shades out of my enormous candy and snacks receptacle purse (it's amazing what you'll find in there), located my keys and headed for the exit. If I hurried home I'd still have time for a bit of gardening before nightfall. I followed the movie lemmings in a race to get to out, found the door, and squinted in anticipation of the brutal California sun.

It was.... dark. At 7:30. Fearing Sudden Onset Blindness (I saw it once on Oprah and have been terrified ever since), I stopped dead in my tracks. Like a line of dominos, the single-file group of about 20 people behind me collided in a chain reaction of L.A. freeway proportions. And I was their leader.

A good friend once told me "If you're going down, never do it alone. Take as many people with you as you can." So in a moment of pure genius, I turned to the Twilight t-shirt wearing 13 year old directly behind me, shook my head and said in my best childless-woman-of-little-tolerance voice, "Come on! Can't you see there are people behind you? You're going to kill someone!" By the time she could muster a witty teenage retort I was long gone.

So I suppose the day getting shorter tells us summer has come to an end. It's time to prepare the soil for a winter garden, move the chair cushions inside, and finish all of those sunny weather projects that got started in June. It will start raining soon and hanging out in the garden 'til the bugs start biting will have to wait until next year.  I wonder if there are any good movies coming out.....