It's autumn, my favorite season. How would I know, living in South Florida, that fall has arrived? The first few years of living down here since 1976 it was hard to tell, but Florida does have changing seasons, all the way down to the Keys.
The angle of the light is subtly changing, and the sun rises a minute later and sets a minute earlier every day. The summer heat begins to give way to slightly cooler evenings, and the vegetation changes a bit.
But even after thirty years in SoFla I still miss the northern blaze of leaves falling and the crisp, cool northern air. In any event we still celebrate the buildup of holidays through the fall months: the Halloween trick-or-treaters still bang on our door here as in Indiana, the Thanksgiving turkey or ham is still the best meal of the year, the crazy Christmas shopping frenzy is just as spirited in our balmy super malls as it is in the heart of New York City, and we still go out and bang our pots and pans with spoons at midnight on New Year's Eve with the rest of you. It's just a little warmer outside.
Just a little warmer, as in, maybe by then some of us have the windows open instead of running the air conditioner, and open up our doors to our patios. It's too hot and humid to enjoy the patio until about November, but from then till the humidity comes back in May or June is really prime time for playing Trivial Pursuit under the covered porch, lazily swinging back and forth on the swing, or just talking in the dark and watching the stars.
Autumn is the time for doing that. It begins the nine months when our steam room region becomes a veritable paradise, and the snowbirds begin coming by Thanksgiving and don't leave till next Easter. It's where we would be, possibly, if we could get away from a northern residence; but we're already here and comfortable with what we have.
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Waiting for the Phone to Ring
A Southern Tier woman is still waiting to hear whether her son made it out of Hurricane Katrina alive.
Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a online book store site. It pretty much covers online book store related stuff.
Come and check it out if you get time :-)
One of the things I didn't like about living in Houston was the lack of clear season changes. Yes, the weather got cooler, and it was nice when the mosquito population thinned out so we could sit on the balcony of our apartment overlooking the bayou.
But fall wasn't fall without the brightly colored leaves, and winter wasn't winter without snow. Well, OK, once during the 5 years I lived there, Houston had snow and ice, but it was dirty snow and heavy, soul-crushing ice.
On the other hand, even though the southern tip of Texas, where Pat grew up, has even less definable seasons than Houston, it's not so bad. Starting about Thanksgiving, it seems as if the entire retired population of the Midwest migrates there to escape from the soul-crushing ice that happens up there EVERY winter. The best Thanksgiving dinner I ever had was on South Padre Island, with all the traditional stuff like turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce, but also with fresh Gulf seafood. Why make do with a few tinned smoked oysters mixed into the dressing, if one can have oysters Rockefeller instead?
When we retire, Pat and I may finally reach a balance. He grew up on the beach on South Padre Island (back when it was still fairly isolated), and I grew up in the mountains of northern New Mexico. He wants to be close to the ocean; I want to be close to mountains. We already have Five O'Clock Somewhere up in the mountains, and our plan is that when we retire, we sell our house in Albuquerque and replace it with a nice boat, which we will keep somewhere warm, such as southern California.
That way, we will have the best of both worlds. When we want isolation and/or mountains, we will be at Five O'Clock Somewhere, and when we want to be where there's action and ocean, we will visit the boat.
Sounds like a great plan, Carol Anne.
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