Without flipping the page of the calendar, we already knew it was September from the sound of the crickets. The bright red berries on the mountain ash also reminded us, as did the goldenrod and ragweed – and the sneezes.

Labor Day came and went, with it half the town’s population. Main Street became easier to cross, and each day another yacht disappeared from the cove as suddenly as it had appeared in early summer like a returning loon.

The fair came and went, leaving behind fresh memories of baby calves, roller-coasters, showy gladiola – and a piece of candied apple still stuck between our teeth.

This morning, the school bus came and went, picking up excited youngsters clutching their lunchboxes and book bags, pressing their faces against smudged windows to see their parents waving from the driveway.

After all the commotion of summertime, coastal communities such as ours settled into September. Lobstermen could fish on Sundays again; the women could begin their canning and pickling and jelly-making. Just as they’ve always done, once summer slowed to a halt.

Prospect Harbor author Miriam Colwell beautifully describes the seasonal cycles in her recently published “Contentment Cove:”

“Each fall, when the leaves turn on the maples and elms and beeches, seems more beautiful than the last. Even sunless days have their own dulled radiance.

“The summer places are closed and the town takes off its girdle and feels comfortable again, and has a baked bean supper to raise money for a new cemetery gate.”

She writes of sunny, warm September days when “there are storm windows to wash, and reputty, gardens to be stripped of pea vines, and the wilted stalks of corn.”

And her words are just as true today as in her fictional story about a town in the late 1950s, a “town caught in the fingers of the coastline – a chosen land.”

Those of us living in such a chosen land welcome the seasons as we would familiar friends. We know them so well by now it comes as no surprise each year when summer, seemingly, comes and goes as quickly as a dragonfly in the garden.

And August ripens into September along with the cherry tomatoes on the vine.