First Harvest and the Summertime Scaries

August always feels a bit like the Sunday Scaries. Where I live in the Pacific Northwest, summer starts like clockwork on July 4th weekend while June is often cool and rainy. It’s only after this date that the languid summer days start to sink in, like lying back in a soft patch of grass in the dappled sunlight. July is busy and slow, a mixture of activity and mellowness: family events, trips to the beach, long evenings outside with a glass of pink wine in hand.

Once August arrives, the energy shifts. Maybe it’s a learned habit from all of my years of primary school, but I suddenly feel like I can sense summer ending. The sun sets before nine each night and everything takes on a dry, faded quality. It doesn’t matter that the heat will linger for at least another two months—once the ‘ber months roll around, autumn’s reign begins.

I always feel a bit frantic at the onset of this seasonal shift. Where before I basked in the laziness of summer, I suddenly feel like time is running out. Anything that I’d hoped to get done during the warmer months now has a stopwatch running against it. Like the anxiety on a Sunday before the start of the work week, I suddenly remember that time is finite.

This year, August’s arrival coincides with my husband’s return to work after paternity leave. Our little family has been cocooned for the past three months, existing in a world outside of time where the only schedule is defined by feeding sessions. Now, an element of structure has returned to our days. Mondays have meaning again.

Even though I’ll still be on maternity leave until October, I’ve felt myself falling into this old pattern of seasonal anxiety. Anything I want to get done during the week that requires time and two empty hands now has to flex around both his work schedule and my son’s feeding times. It’s easy to lean into a scarcity mindset—that even though my days seem empty, there are still limitations on my time.

August 1st is Lughnasadh, the First Harvest. It’s a time characterized by abundance and reaping in the fruitfulness of our efforts from the previous season. For gratitude and appreciating what we have. Usually I’m very in tune with the rhythms of the earth, but this sabbat always feels like a contradiction to me. My mind is focused on the ending of the season right when it’s at its height.

Maybe my spur of energy is more aligned with the season than I think though. Harvesting after all is an active process, requiring hard work and effort to gather what’s grown and sort out the good from the bad. It’s intrinsically related to the end of the season and the preparation for the next. We used to harvest food so that we could survive through the winter. Maybe my rush of creative energy is a different form of harvesting—it’s me wanting to collect together as many experiences as I can before the stillness of autumn sets in.

There an opportunity for me to reframe how I approach this seasonal shift. Instead of an frenzied rush to do it all, maybe August can be a time for selective and intentional effort. Don’t cut down the whole orchard and throw it in the back of the wagon just to save time—choose what’s ready to be picked and what’s not, leaving some things on the branch to ripen longer.