Changing Seasons

 

As time marches on, sometimes it seems to stumble a bit and I feel compelled to write about it. This is one of those times. The specifics of the stumble are this: Most of the last several months proceeded in an orderly fashion and I came to expect ongoing summertime outdoor temperatures ranging from the low sixties to the high eighties. Pretty normal and pretty pleasant for our summer despite the absence of enough rainfall. And then Bam! Fall hit us, almost without warning. I wasn’t ready. None of my warmer fall clothes were arranged in neat piles in my closet, none of my outdoor fall jobs had been completed (nor even started for that matter), as I watched summer dissolve without the slightest concern that time was running short.

I was cruising along in complete and utter disregard of the calendar and the evidence at hand. I should have heeded the example of our resident hummingbirds. About ten days ago, our pair began a sudden feeding frenzy, flitting from flower to flower incessantly over the course of several days. And then they were gone. No doubt the pair are now basking in the warm glow of the sun in some distant vacation mecca, chuckling about those of us too dumb to make advance preparations for the impending gloom of winter.

Our temperatures have plummeted. Now I arise each morning and my first question is, ‘how much frost did we get last night?’ It is a dumb question made more so by the overwhelming evidence of dead and rotting flowers in each of our outdoor pots. Emptying these pots should be high on my priority job list but I am now away from home and the temptation to get my house in order is a somewhat distant memory. “I’ll get to it when I get home,” is the excuse that I use to calm any disturbing thoughts about a stitch in time saves nine.

Yes, the Missus and I are on our final camping trip of the year, too engaged in a summertime ritual to bother about little things like an orderly, neat garden. We have, however, found time to discuss all the jobs that need doing upon our return. Sadly, the list is even longer than I expected as we have added the cleaning and winterizing of our camper to the list. This is not a trivial undertaking since the trailer is new and we are determined to make a valiant effort in following at least some of the recommendations of the trailer manufacturer about cleaning the trailer roof and exterior. (Those darn bugs have accumulated and are now decorating the trailer’s frontispiece.)

I am finding that life can be difficult in that way. Not about too much work, but more about making decisions concerning which things must be done, and which can be conveniently dismissed by forgetting, or my favorite, failing to complete a task because some other task takes precedence. Besides, there are only so many wonderful fall days on the calendar remaining and too few days of the breath-taking color that demand a car ride through the woods or some other partaking of leisure. In the final analysis It is likely that I’ll skip a few of the tedious jobs in favor of tasting a few more of the warmer, leisurely days before winter sets in with its white blankness of snow and honest to God cold that is mind-numbingly-painful for an older dude, not that it applies to me, of course.

So, I’ll probably decide that watching the seasons change is an important treat worthy of finding another excuse or two to justify my leisure time this fall. Now, I need to convince the Missus.