Book of Days

Our gift to you each month is a printable calendar to accompany this blog; here now is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for August. And lest you think a good deal of planning goes into these calendars, this month’s calendar will dispel any suggestion of that: the photos for the calendar were taken just last week while we were vacationing in Maine.

We miss Maine but we are back to our regular routines. The sun is strong and the humidity is high and we keep hoping it will rain but it doesn’t. My garden survived my absence, though the okra got woody and the sunflowers are looking bedraggled. It is that time of summer where a bit of delirium begins setting in. It was nice to have a break of cooler New England weather, but we realize now a bit of a tactical error: there is still so much of a Florida summer yet to be endured.

Be that as it may, Lammas, today, reminds us that summer is indeed waning. Even here in this land where summer is king. It is, as well, the month of Obon, the traditional Japanese festival honoring the dead, and it is the month of the Assumption, which gave my grandmother Assunta her name. It is the month of cakes 21 feet tall and of St. Augustine, patron saint of brewers, and of St. Bartholomew, patron saint of bookbinders and book artists, whose day brings the traditional Printers’ Wayzgoose. And we begin to realize that autumn is on its way.

Somehow today we find ourselves halfway through the year. It is July now, and so here is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for July. It’s a printable PDF on standard US Letter size paper, and it is a good companion to the blog. This month’s cover stars are strips of handmade paper tied in the bamboo in our back yard and left to flutter in the wind and weather. Upon each strip of paper is a wish. It’s a lovely custom surrounding Tanabata, the star festival of Japan that falls each year on the Seventh day of the Seventh month.

This month brings as well the conclusion of Ramadan with Eid Ul-Fitr. There are a few national holidays: Today, the First, is Canada Day, and of course our own Independence Day on the Fourth, and on the Fourteenth, Bastille Day in France. July ushers in the Dog Days of summer, traditionally the hottest part of the year, ruled by the dog star Sirius, and it brings a number of saints’ days––St. Anne and St. James, St. Martha and St. Swithins. And come the end of the month, it is Lammas Eve: It is the day Shakespeare chose as the birthday of Juliet. The eve ushers in August and Lammas, which is our first marker of summer’s passing into fall.

But that’s a long time from now. Now we welcome July.