So
far this year we’ve had a wintery winter, a springy spring, and a summery
summer—nice change of pace after several years in a row with wild weather
swings, scaring us all about climate change.
But
this week, right on time, the season went ka-thud
as if someone had slammed a door or thrown a switch. We’ve been creeping toward
fall for a few weeks, but temperatures and overall weather have stayed clement
enough for shorts and open windows, with the gardens a-burgeoning and birds
a-twittering. Meanwhile, a little more light has been disappearing every day.
Then,
overnight, it turned cold, dark, and soggy—penetratingly raw. Foliage that had
been hinting at color flared into autumn hues. We’ve had to shut all windows
and dig out jeans and sweatshirts. Booted up the boiler to start heating our
mass-storage water tank for winter.
The
cats stopped resisting coming in at night and resumed sleeping together in
piles. The birds are either stuffing themselves at the feeder and gathering
into noisy flocks, or else just disappearing—with the winter regulars returning
to take their place.
Blossoms
suddenly turned into seed heads. Dew is changing to frost, and daily highs have
dropped 10–20 degrees no matter how sunny. We had a super-moon and almost an
aurora borealis back to back for excitement, but those seemed to just augur the
change now upon us. Equinox is only days away; snow, only weeks.
It’s
funny, though. The same thing happens every year . . . but something about
summer seduces you into forgetting. It works in reverse, too: Winter ka-thuds into spring. But spring and
summer just kind of meld in a dynamic blur, an expansion vs. the fall–winter
contraction. In these parts, really, what we have is Warm Season and Cold
Season.
The
shift between them just happened, making it time to button up and batten down.
