Fall ALMOST makes up for miserable Florida summers...of course if you factor in that Northern Fall is my favorite season ever Florida still falls short. After so many years here however, I am starting to find things I love about Florida. I love the summer rain, the way it sheets down and sprays off people's roofs, the way it brings that coolness to the heavy hot air. I can now see the beauty in rivers with cypress knees, spanish moss and giant oaks. I do love the 56 degree mornings with the 78 degree days, as short as they last. I like 3 growing seasons, orange trees, the smell of Jasmine wafting through the neighborhood and gardenias floating by as I walk. I like wild peafowl, all the little lizards that remind me of shrunken dinosaurs and the smell before it rains. I do like Florida Fall that's where the 56 to 76 degree days come in, but the feel of the weather is where my love of Florida Fall stops, it doesn't offer a whole lot more aside from festivals and outdoor activities since it finally isn't sweltering and miserable when you step out of the AC.
Northern Fall is different. I love Northern fall, the crisp air, the crunchy leaves, the smell: oh the smell of rotting leaves and damp soil,pine needles, of smoke from wood fires and the wonderful fresh something a hint of cold with a remnant of summer. I love the long sleeves, the hats, jeans, oranges, browns, reds, and yellows. I wish I could live forever in the fall...well almost.
I just discovered this blog called 1000 awesome things, through a book offered on amazon oddly enough while looking for Christmas presents. #401 makes me yearn for the falls of my youth. Hubs is up in one right now, for the first time ever and he doesn't like it. CRAZY. Here by the way is #401, so you don't have to go searching for it yourself.
#401 The sound of dry leaves blowing across an empty parking lot
Orange skies burn as winds whisper for your chilly walk home.
The sun dips down in the distance and dogs bark behind backyard fences as your hair blows wildly in the cool and crisp breeze. You squint into the wind and stuff your hands in your thin pockets as you sniff up that smoky sweet smell of garage barbecues, dusty furnace fumes, and dry leaves.
The sound of leaves blowing in the street adds a peaceful soundtrack to the scene and feels like nature’s talking to you — like waves crashing onto a beach or wind whispering in your ears on a late night bike ride.
It’s the sound of a good summer gone by and the sound of a cold winter coming. It’s the sound of seasons changing, life rearranging, and everything just blowing on…
AWESOME!
I find I want to devour writing about fall, to travel into the words to my beloved season.
If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before.
Mitchell Burgess Northern Exposure, Thanksgiving, 1992
"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns."
- George Eliot
"Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!"
- Humbert Wolfe
"Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity;
but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn
on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling
hills that reach to the far horizon?
- Hal Borland
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