They tended to come in clumps, as usual, like city buses—none at all for a quarter of an hour or so and then two or three in the space of a couple of minutes. I'd say the shower averaged about one notable meteor every four minutes, plus a bunch of little, pale streaks which I caught from the corner of my eye but were gone when I looked directly toward them. The trees, taller each year, blocked about half the sky, so there were probably a number of meteors that I missed.
Temporally, I also missed a bit of the shower near the end of the night because I nodded off. My new chaise lounge is obviously too comfortable! I went to sleep despite the cold, but when I woke the stars had shifted only slightly, so only fifteen or twenty minutes had passed. Not too long after that the sky began to turn pale and the Milky Way vanished and the remaining stars grew dim. The last meteor I saw was a swift, bright streak which had the cerulean sky overhead almost to itself. The east had already begun turning mauve. Altogether it was a decent display, though not the most spectacular Perseids I've ever seen.
The day was once again typically Augustan, warm, smelling of dry grass, full of birds, and the sky overhead clear while a vague haze hovered over the valley. It turned out to be the day that comes each year when dusk catches me by surprise because I'm not expecting it so soon. There's a bit more than a month until the autumnal equinox. For now I can still listen to the evening crickets count the seconds. It won't be long, though.
