The lead up to this weekend's Labour Day begins a period of rapid transition full of endings and beginnings.
You can see it in the fields and feel it in the air and hear it in the way people talk. The times, they are changing.
The most obvious, and perhaps disheartening, is the end of summer. With August on the way out, autumn is the next stop in the cycle. Along with that, we can put the dog days behind us and move forward into a period of activity.
As August is the final opportunity at relaxation, September beckons in longer schedules jammed into shorter days.
School is around the corner, with our university students packing up and leaving home this week, and our secondary and elementary students picking out their new outfits for the start of the 2014-15 school year next Tuesday. Certainly, the schedules of all the young people become exponentially busier overnight.
We once again remind motorists around Estevan and those travelling the highways and country roads to be mindful of the added pedestrian and bus traffic. The city's crosswalks will be more regularly trodden and our yellow buses deserve wide berths, so all of our drivers should be doubly alert come Sept. 2.
It's an exciting time for parents who finally get to whisk their kids out of the house each morning, and it's a chance for students to reconnect and get involved.
But the tumultuous transitioning doesn't stop with the world of education.
The agriculture world experiences its own ignition period as timelines become tighter and the crops require an extra dose of attention before being removed from the province's sprawling fields.
Again, with more activity in the fields, there will be added activity on our roads and highways. Equipment will be moving from acreage to acreage, and harvested crops will be trucked to the various terminals around the southeast for shipment.
Dependent on the always-unpredictable weather, our local farmers are left to work the fields at a backbreaking pace, cognizant that on any day a downpour could shut operations down and a cold spell could spoil a season's worth of work.
While the sports world runs year round, the slate becomes a little more bogged down as the local football teams begin playing on home turf once again, and before long, the pucks will drop on the many hockey seasons for our young men and women.
Along with the schools' academic programs starting up will be their athletic programs, and all of these teams, whether they are in the schools' or the city's many minor sports programs, they enjoy the community's support and attendance.
The end of August marks the beginning of the final push to get things done in the calendar year. Construction projects must reach a certain point before the cold hits and the ground freezes.
At the end of August, we realize time is running out, our deadlines are staring us in the face, and we have a smaller window of opportunity to see things through to completion. It's crunch time for everyone, and it's a wonder if we'll even have an opportunity to watch the leaves change.
