Today will be mostly cloudy, but it is sunny right now. It will be warm again. The great weather continues.

Yesterday the great mystery of the sock was solved. Last week I found a single sock on my deck from a favorite pair of socks. I know socks don’t walk though my mother used to warn us that our socks were so dirty they could walk themselves to the washer. The sock I found was wet so I put it on the rail to dry. I went upstairs through my basket of socks but couldn’t find the mate of the deck sock. In a while, the sock disappeared from the rail, but I saw it in the yard. Nala was the sock thief. That much I knew. I left the mateless sock in the yard. Yesterday I picked up my laundry. In the bag, at the top of the clean laundry pile was the sock, the missing mate. Now the other sock was missing, still in the yard I figured. I went hunting and found it. The socks have been reunited.

When I was a kid, my world was small. The most exciting places were the stores uptown and, my favorite place, just down from the square, the library. Those were the days of speaking in whispers and librarians shushing us. The librarian was old. She wore the same type dresses my grandmother did. She really did have a bun. She also spoke in whispers. At the desk, I’d hand her my books. She’d take out the card from the back of the book, stamp it with the due date and then put it back into the book. She always carefully stamped the card within the lines.

Uptown had smells and aromas. The best was the aroma which filled the square when the bread was baking at Hank’s Bakery. I remember Hanks so well. Inside were glass cases filled with brownies, cakes and cupcakes. On the wall behind the counter were the breads and rolls. I remember the white boxes and the giant roll of twine. The lady behind the counter filled the box and quickly wound it with twine. Her fingers moved so fast the box was wound with string in a heartbeat.

A distinct smell came from the fish market at the end of the square. I remember the lobsters swimming. I also remember the fish on ice. Some still had heads. I remember the fly strips hanging from the ceiling. They were sticky so they were covered with dead flies who had made bad decisions.

I am disappointed by today’s grey sky. Tonight is the harvest moon. It will be full after ten, and then there will be a partial eclipse. I’ll see clouds.

The morning is pretty with a bright sun glinting off the leaves in the backyard. It is getting warmer after last night, a chilly night. For the last few weeks, our weather has been following that same pattern, days in the low 70’s and nights in the 50’s. That seems about perfect.

When I was a kid, I loved the fall most of all. It seemed to touch every sense. All the trees were covered in red or yellow leaves, and when they started to fall, it was like a shower of colors above and below. The leaves fell quietIy and sometimes fluttered and danced as they fell. I remember the sound of the rake. My father raked the leaves into piles on the side lawn. The rake made a scratching sound, a rhythmic sound as my father went back and forth across the grass. After he was finished with the yard, he’d rake the leaves to the gutter below the small grassy hill, the hill we’d ride our bikes down. He’d burn the leaves. I can still see the smoke billowing. I can see my father in his red jacket standing by the pile to tend the fire. He’d feed it with more leaves. The smoke rose straight up from the pile. It smelled sweet and a bit earthy from the dirt clinging to the leaves. It is my favorite memory of fall.

I loved walking to and from school during the fall. The morning air was clear. It had a crispness, a chill. I‘d wear my jacket. It was warm enough for the mornings but too warm in the afternoons so I’d tie it around my waist or stuff it into my school bag. The sun was different on fall afternoons. It looked faded. Its light was slanted. The sun went down early and the air chilled. You knew winter was coming.