“We need the water.”

They didn’t say that after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, though, and I’ve noticed that when it rained on Sunday and Monday, just after the deluge from Tropical Storm Debby last week, nobody has been maintaining that we need the water.

This is the time of Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod, crickets, early twilight and late sunrise. When did the frogs stop singing?

August. Do the math all you want, February is definitely not the shortest month of the year. This is the shortest month. August. Blink and it’s gone.

Our summer visitors sense this as the season ramps up right before it falls off.

Soon now, we are going to have to get serious. Summer vacation is on its last legs. Children will soon be going back to school. Fall is beautiful, but with fall comes the knowledge that winter is not far off. Remember Aesop’s fable about the ant and the grasshopper?

People who live here all year feel the change. Adirondack winters are no joke. Depending on how you heat, get those stove cords racked or the fuel oil paid for before the autumn rates set in or budget for the winter electric bill.

Although the winter electric bill may not be that different from the summer air conditioner bill. July was unusually hot this year. Everyone says so, and the records back them up.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July temperatures were above average to record warm across much of the eastern United States.

While I am not from here — having lived in the town of Keene for only 33-and-a-half years — I just ciphered it out — I have witnessed the change in the local climate during that time.

As I’ve mentioned in this column before, we are no longer officially Climate Zone 3, as we were during the early years of my sojourn. No, we are now a warmer Climate Zone 4. Although there is such a thing as Zone 2, probably in Siberia and the Eurasian Steppe, Zone 3 is the coldest of all the United States Department of Agriculture garden zones in the United States. It has the shortest growing season, with a last frost date of May 15 and first frost date of Sept. 15, with an annual minimum temperature of minus 30 degrees.

This may sound ridiculously cold to you, and it did to me, too, before I moved here. Or blew in, as some local people said at the time. Technically, like some dandelion or milkweed seed, I am still a blow-in. I am not bitter about this. It is a fact of nature.

I once saw a documentary about the people of Siberia. It was 40 degrees below zero, and women were carrying several liters of cow’s milk without benefit of containers. The milk was frozen hard as rock, so they could tote it around as they ran their daily errands without fear of it melting or souring or otherwise going bad.

I remember Adirondack summers when there was frost in both July and August, and I am speaking now, not as an old-timer in the Adirondacks, but as a relatively recent blow-in. The weather is different now.

One winter, during a full moon, the temperature fell to 40 degrees below zero. Cascade Ski Touring was still open for its Full Moon Party, and plenty of people participated. Insane? Perhaps. But true.

My daughter, Molly, has always loved the town of Keene. She has considered it her hometown since we moved here when she was 12. Molly and her husband, Jim, and children, Emma and Jack, just came for a visit. They are in the process of moving from California to the East Coast. I used to worry every time I heard about the wildfires in California. The Park Fire is the fourth-largest wildfire in California history as of Aug. 6; beginning on July 24, at this writing the current acreage burned is approximately 429,188 in total. More than 600 structures have been destroyed. I am so glad they are out of there.

Yes, it still gets cold here, but the climate is changing. Enjoy August and have a good week.

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the News for over 20 years.)