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The normal Sunday service was held at our church in Cundy's Harbor that day. The only aspect of it that suggested this was not a normal Sunday was that it started an hour earlier than usual.

Wow! Did we survive this summer? Did we get to the beach enough, or out on the boat enough? How many chicken suppers or lobster rolls did you and your visitors consume? Did you make the ice cream socials?

School's back in session, and if the elementary school curriculum has any resemblance to my experience, early fall means kids still have gym class outside and they're playing soccer before moving inside for the dreaded square dancing unit.

As a chef, my year tends to follow a different rhythm. Summers are packed with events, gatherings and dinner parties that keep me busy. The long days are filled with cooking for others who are enjoying the best of what the season has to offer. But once September arrives, things start to slow down. The days get shorter, the weather cools, and I get to take a breather. It's a welcome change of pace after the nonstop activity of summer.

I don't have a degree in art, but I did get through high school, not counting algebra, and I know beauty when I see it. I also expect I'd be forcibly ejected from a theater audience at a ballet performance. In the first place, I could only be in such a place hog-tied, blindfolded, gagged and dragged, and I promise there would be quite a ruckus, not to mention plenty of armpit-generated flatulent noises after chewing myself free.

Some will say the approaching end of summer is sad, and indeed it is, although this past summer was a bit too hot and humid for my liking. The only people I know who were truly ecstatic about the sultry weather were those at my electric company.

Stuck at my desk, clearing the last to-dos so I can head to the cabin, I'm feeling the crushing weight of another Anchor deadline. The songbirds and gray squirrel feeding a few feet away are a diversion. The germ of an idea is in my head but undefined when BANG — something smashes into the sliding glass door! I look up in time to see the back end of a sharp-shinned hawk streaking from the scene and his feathers littering the ground.