The Fifth Season
Blog post
8/24/20264 min read
Twixtmer
I know there are four seasons, but I can’t help feeling there’s a fifth! The end of August feels so very different from the beginning of June. Hot and mellow, where June is summer’s warm but fresh start. It feels languorous, relaxed, almost as if everything is coming to a stop. I feel Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune fits this vibe.
My fifth season runs for a few weeks — from mid-to-late August to mid-September. Schools have yet to start back and a lot of people are still taking their summer holidays. We are often back from ours, however, and the local neighbourhood is quiet.
Even when returning to work, there is more of a relaxed feel. The calm before the storm of the mass return to work and school. For me, it’s an in-between time that resembles the Twixtmas week between Christmas and New Year, sitting as it does between the festivities of my summer holiday and La Rentrée — the great return to work and school, to productivity.
I’m relaxed, the holiday has had its rejuvenating effect, and whilst I’m getting back into my routines, they are not undertaken in a spirit of survival! Similarly to Twixtmas, there may be new resolutions on the horizon. This is a time for me to reflect on changes I wish to make to my day-to-day routines, experiment a little bit, see what feels good, before setting them in stone come September and it gets busy again.
If the weather allows — and this year it certainly does — I’m still called to do all the summery things: all the outside activities, eating and socialising outdoors, luxuriating in the sunshine. There is another bank holiday in the UK, adding to the festive mood; another social BBQ, the last hurrah before work beckons.
Everything is golden. The grass in our local big park is left to grow and, at this time of year, resembles a wheat field. In the countryside, a common sight is huge golden straw bales. Everyone back from their holidays is glowing!
The garden is pretty parched, especially this year, and is beginning to look rather spent. It’s a time to start taking stock of it, but not necessarily doing much apart from continuing to deadhead and water, if allowed. My end-of-summer garden is not great. The beautiful displays of early summer — the poppies, love-in-a-mist, stocks, snapdragons, nicotiana and cosmos — are over. The roses are still producing, but there is not much else really going on. The dahlias haven’t really worked. My autumn plan is to plant more for this time of year. But now is not the time for that. That belongs to the busyness and productivity of autumn, and we are not there yet. What I do now is collect some seeds that I will sow in the autumn for next year’s display.
That golden light leads us into September, which can still feel very mellow and relaxed. It’s a good time to appreciate l’heure bleue, the Blue Hour, that magical time after the sun sets but before night falls, because the sun sets earlier now, around 8.30 pm. In folklore it is seen as a liminal time, when spirits roam, and it is beloved of photographers because of the quality of the light.
A lot of our end-of-summer food is pretty golden too! I’m thinking sweetcorn, which comes into season in August; peaches, apricots and melons still abound. Deep burgundy is a very-now colour too: aubergines, figs, grapes, blackberries. Maybe your refreshed pedicure could be using Chanel’s Rouge Noir...
I am really into Mediterranean holiday food at this time of year: melon and jambon, tapenade toasts, tomato tarte tatin, watermelon and feta, Greek salad, melanzane alla parmigiana, paella, pa amb tomàquet, stuffed calamari, grilled sardines... And, before life gets busy, more servings of stuffed courgette flowers. I have given a recipe for those in the recipe section.
It’s been too hot to make jam this year, but I am keen to preserve some of the summer fruits I’ve been enjoying with a spot of jam-making: strawberries before it’s too late, plums and blackberries. And I will continue making strawberry vinegar (see June/recipes) while the fruit is available. I guess one could do this with raspberries as well, and blackberries. I’m not drawn to using raspberries; they are on the dear side, and what I appreciate about making strawberry vinegar is that it uses the tops that you would otherwise throw away. Raspberry vinaigrette was such a thing in the 90s! I could be drawn to blackberry vinegar made from some foraged fruit, however.
Another thing I’m pulled to do when I get back from my holidays is to start making soup. I know soup is an autumn/winter thing, but I like to start at the end of the summer. The reason is twofold. By this time of year, after a summer of grilling and barbecuing a fair bit of meat and fish on the bone — the remains of which I shove in the freezer for a rainy day — I have a freezer full of bones! Not a good use of electricity, I don’t think, to keep that little lot frozen. What’s more, the end-of-season defrost beckons and I’m conscious of moving old bones from pillar to post in order to do this. Ultimately, I love having a batch of soup on the go just now for lovely light suppers after the indulgences of the holidays, and frozen portions for quick lunches to grab and take into the office.
When we get to September and I start to notice the chestnut leaves turning copper, I’m very mindful that another summer is drawing to an end and can’t help feeling wistful. A song that really embodies this for me is Septembre by the French singer Barbara. I love her music.
In the links section I have added a Spotify playlist that I love listening to at this time of year. It includes a rendition of Harvest Moon, so it feels very fitting. As long as I feel that I made the most of the summer — and this year I think I really have — I don’t let myself descend too far into melancholy. And besides, I’m very excited for La Rentrée!
