August stinks. I don’t mean this in a slangy, pejorative, Jay Shermanesque manner; I mean, it literally stinks. I stepped out onto our back patio earlier this week, and the combination of recent heavy rains, already-simmering heat and stifling humidity had brought forth a rotten smell in the air—nowhere comparable to the hot-garbage smells of my New York City summers past, but by no means pleasant either. I immediately clocked the stench for what it is: a harbinger of the season’s final evolution.