SAY WHAT you will about spring. Fall is the best time. Of course, this depends on where you are.
If you live somewhere with sweltering summers, then spring is just an introduction to suffering. Autumn would be the door to pain closing behind you. Time to rejoice.
Most of my life was spent in zones with sweltering summers, so I’m an autumnal man. Falling leaves and shades of brown put a lively spring to my faltering steps.
If you can vision such a thing.
Eating a bagel this morning, I looked out the huge window to the right and noticed falling, yellow leaves from the peach tree. Ah, I thought, the feel and look of fall.
It’s cool out too.
Winter here is not too bad if you don’t mind coats and scarves inside the house in the morning, and I don’t mind.
Here I am drinking hot coffee on a winter morning years ago. My child bride knitted that wool scarf for me.
Another sweet aspect to fall here is that it stops raining. November is our best month. It’s not raining, and everything is still green, not the dusty brown of springtime.
November also brings the Day of the Dead.
But we’re not in November yet. It’s something I look forward to and, in the meantime, I eat my bagels, look out the window and smile at the leaves falling from the peach tree.
As I type this, there is lively music from the neighborhood plaza. It’s been going full-tilt boogy since dawn. I have no clue what we’re celebrating. Perhaps the falling leaves.
More likely some long-gone saint.
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(Note: That top photo was a zoom test on my new camera. I was a long way off. That arch and the carport roof are inside the Hacienda walls, and I was half a block away.)