September song

September is a special month, it is a time for the ending of summer, and the promise of fall. It is also a time of renewal. As a teacher, I was very aware of the fact that many students saw the first weeks of September as an opportunity to make a new or fresh start. Mother Nature loves to play games with us in September, the rain and winds come hard, and then the sunny days and heat of summer rebound. 

September is one of my favourite months of the year.  Days grow short when you reach September, and for many of us who are older, September is a time to cast our minds back to our youth and to look ahead to the short time we have left. 

I love the September Song, composed by Kurt Weill with Lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, as it speaks to youth, discovery, and the need for someone to be with us in our "golden years."

When I was a young man courting the girls

I played me a waiting game

If a maid refused me with tossing curls

I'd let the old Earth make a couple of whirls

While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls

And as time came around she came my way

As time came around, she came 

When you meet with the young girls early in the Spring

You court them in song and rhyme

They answer with words and a clover ring

But if you could examine the goods they bring

They have little to offer but the songs they sing

And the plentiful waste of time of day

A plentiful waste of time

Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December

But the days grow short when you reach September

When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame

I haven't got time for the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few

September, November

And these few precious days I'll spend with you

These precious days I'll spend with you

Musings on a November day

Winter is coming up fast and summer is becoming a distant memory and I am sitting here on a quiet November Friday listening to so I'll follow the sun. ~Lennon-McCartney and thinking of summer and summer flowers.

Is there anything that embodies cheerful radiance more than the sunflower? A brilliant emblem of summer, it stands proudly with a strength and resilience that belies its impossibly thin and fragile frame.

Sunflowers are heliotropic, having the marvelous ability to turn their heads toward the sun, tracking the warm sunshine as it moves across the sky. The center of the sunflower is actually filled with hundreds of flowers growing individually, which can become other sunflowers if planted. They are also a natural decontaminator and have been used to clean up soil at some of the world's biggest environmental disasters.

Thinking of choosing a personal emblem? Consider the sunflower. It's a reminder to stand tall. To be useful. To grow quickly. To enrich the world with the brilliance of simple happiness and know how to multiply it. And to be able to find the sunshine, wherever it may be, and reach toward it gracefully and with purpose.