Fall.....Noooooooooo

The sun did the equinox thing.  I saw the superharvest moon glowing in the sky.  I went to sleep.  When I woke up the trees had started to turn, seemingly overnight.

"Sob", I cried, "summer is over. "


As I posted last year, I must be dragged kicking and screaming into fall.  Even when we have a summer when you KNOW we had a summer (hot, dry, hot....) I still don't want to let go.  My fingernails dig into the ripening pumpkins, the apple trees bowed under weight of a bumper crop.  They cling to the corn stalks of the last corn of the season (spouse will be cooking some soon.)  "Noooooooooo....." I scream, as the calendar turns.

Then, there it is.  The sourwood tree by our house announces fall, red coloring its leaves.  I look at both the valley and the hilltop, with red and yellow appearing out of nowhere.  The goldenrod, so distinctive two weeks ago, sheds its yellow.  The mums, open in red, orange and yellow, look like they belong.  Pumpkins appear on doorsteps.  The air is clear and crisp.

"It's almost time", the northern breeze whistles at me.  "It's almost time for harvest festivals.  You know you want go to the farmers market and see the apples glistening in their wooden baskets, don't tell me you don't.  It's time for cauliflower, which you love to eat in the "fake mashed potatoes" of the South Beach diet book. "  I sigh and admit the breeze is right.

"Soon", the breeze continues, "you'll be going to Ithaca for the fall book sale.  You'll look at the artists trail brochures, deciding which artists studios to visit this year.  It's fall.  Don't fight it any more.  Join in the celebration of fall.  Although the warm sun that warmed your arthritic knee will soon be a distant memory, you know why you live in upstate NY.  You want those four seasons.  Well, maybe not the winter so much.  But to have fall, you must have winter.  That's the law of nature."

So I gathered my canvas bags and my spouse and went to the farmers market.  I bought honeycrisp apples, several types of potatoes, a couple of ears of late white corn, and a big bag of organic salad greens picked fresh this morning.  And then I walked on the Vestal Rail Trail for 4 miles and went to an art festival in Binghamton.  Then I sat in the back yard and read, until I started to feel cold.

Tomorrow I'll think about putting up fall decorations.  Maybe I will.  Maybe I won't.