Queen Anne's lace is blooming, and you know what that means

 

For the past few weeks, I've been giving a sharp look to every white flower with a flat top and tiny flowers that I see on my walks.

"Don't worry--that one's yarrow," I said to myself a few weeks ago with some relief. 

But when the flower has a tiny purple flower in the middle of the white ones, I can't deny it any more: it's Queen Anne's lace. 

Why do I dread seeing this innocent flower? Because it signals that the summer is well and truly almost over and that the fall semester is just around the corner. 

When Queen Anne's lace appears, you can count on getting email requests that, when you respond to them, lead to the inevitable autoreply: I am on vacation-away from my desk (etc.) and will respond in a few weeks when I return. Their request is urgent, but reading my response is not, I guess. Did I make a rule in Outlook for everyone from whom I got an autoreply, and am I declining to respond for a few weeks until I'm good and ready to look in the folder (after they return)? Yup. 

You know that you have to start thinking about your classes, but during this few weeks--the season of Queen Anne's lace--they are Schroedinger's Canvas course space, so to speak: They exist in the state of being both ready to go (alive) and in need to lots of work (dead), but if you open them, you'll have killed them and will spend the last few precious weeks bringing them back to life. 

Since you only have about two or three weeks left, you have to decide where to gamble with your money, by which I mean brainpower, time, and attention: the mind-numbingly dull task that you have to finish, or the creative one that you want to throw caution to the winds and work on. You realize that you can't do both, so which do you choose? 

Both the literal weather and the academic climate are--let's call it extremely challenging--right now, so I will close by noting something positive: I've been swimming a lot this summer, something I enjoy. I am by no means a "real swimmer," with goggles & metrics about distance, but "a person who swims," which is to say getting into the cold water and swimming for enjoyment. 

But those flowers are reminding me that this part of the summer is rapidly drawing to a close.