For me, Christmas morning can’t hold a candle to one of these rare October dawns when the sun is not quite up and the dew is heavy on the grass and contrails play tic-tac-toe in heaven’s splendid blue vault.

Even above the 6 o’clock newscast I could hear an insistent voice - that of a chickadee calling over and over, and loudly, from the back porch.

Decisions! Decisions! Which of more than a dozen jottings gets the lead paragraph for this column? And suddenly, Mother Nature makes the decision with a dazzling offering on the sunny last day of summer as a friend and I admired the just-mowed pasture.

It wasn’t even Labor Day yet when Halloween decorations, cards and other gimcracks appeared on store shelves.

Getting ready for Canfield Fair was always a rite of passage in bygone days, and it was surely less complicated then than it is today.

Anyone who fancies himself a writer always reads and critiques other writers’ efforts, sometimes with disdain and sometimes with admiration while saying to himself, “I wish I’d written that.

To think I am being held hostage by a half-ounce bird! Outside the kitchen window, the wisteria vine is headed for the roof, hulls from oil sunflower seeds are piling up, venturing to the trash can elicits a loud scolding, and even filling the bird bath is a challenge.

There is an old but tried saying that you can’t fight City Hall. I have found it indeed true. In fact, because I have been fighting a utility instead of city hall - but it is the same thing - I may be in jail by the time you read this.

“Take nine eggs, one-half pound of butter or a tea cup of olive oil, three cold cooked chickens or one medium-sized turkey, two or three bunches of celery .

It would seem that summer has settled in for the long haul. Already the locust blossoms that saturated the sunlit afternoons and the evening breezes with their heady perfume have withered away and the orange blossoms have scattered their petals like snowflakes.