Fall Reflections

Fall may be my favorite time of the year. It's the season of color and cool breezes, of relief from the oppressive heat of summer. One of my favorite poets, the great observer of the ordinary, Emily Dickinson, wrote about the fall season often. Here's a passage from one of her poems ('Autumn') That I always liked because it makes me feel the coolness of autumn.

'The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.'

Yeah, it's about chasing the stick, hot, heat of summer out of town until late Spring betrays me and lets the heat back in. Oh well, if we had fall all year round. surely we would not appreciate it so much. Pity those who have one climate always, who can't anticipate the rebirth the seasons bring. Another poet once called fall "the bright season". I swear all colors are brighter and more intense in autumn.

I am not a poet so instead of trying to regale you with my fall impressions in verse, let me just name five of the things that make fall a special time for me. I like:

* the cooler nights and mornings- Summer is boiling in New Orleans , so I know when fall arrives. It's when I pick up my morning newspaper from the damp grass and feel the cool early morning air that has been absent since spring.

* the color on the trees- There is something spiritual about the beauty of the red and yellow and multitude of shades one sees in fall trees. It makes me wonder how is it possible and how does it always return every year. I think it is a miracle of nature.

* Halloween and Thanksgiving. The former is the coming out party for fall, the latter the leaving. What's in between is the best time of the year for many.

* apple cider, pumpkin desserts and special "fall candy (the candy corn is one example). It reminds me to soon make pumpkin bread.

* sweaters- In New Orleans they come out in mid autumn and at the first sight of even mildly cool weather we all embrace them, wear them, show them off to announce that "summer is finally dead".

May fall live longer than summer, and may all your pumpkins be smiling ones.....