At last, it is September.  As the world evens into hot days and cold nights, everything shifts to yellow--the horizon cleared of rain, the grass at the edges, the goldfinches singing in the sunflowers.  The Sun sinks further South, lingering at the mid-point, like a long kept friend standing at a golden door.  Its last rays kiss the tree tops, and branch by branch they blush a blazing bronze. The preying mantis waits in the porch light as darkness falls.  They remind you that it is almost time to say farewell. But, first we must gather the last of the harvest.  A wall of pyracantha berry, and the glistening prickly pear that stain the sidewalk ruby and purple, are the last course of an exquisite feast. In the canyons, the crevices are soft with the fragrance of decomposing leaves and the fluff of seed and husk.  As the afternoon lengthens, the ridge tops glow warm and rose.  The birds and the bees and the field mice will pick the earth clean, before they too recede into the falling Sun.