Today is cold. It was 45˚ when I woke up, but I didn’t need to see the thermometer to know how cold it was. Fern and Gracie, my weather indicators, were snuggled beside me. None of us wanted to leave the warm bed.
I just heard one of the sounds of summer, my lawn being mowed. I went outside afterwards to water some mums and could only faintly smell the cut grass. Summer is fading away quickly. The sun shines sharper and much cooler. We’re thankful now for fall flowers and days in the low 60’s. They’re the warm days.
The cape is never a riot of color in the autumn. The scrub oak turn red. I have several in my yard, and the red has begun to appear. One tree in my yard turns yellow, but only a few of the leaves have turned. It is not peak season in my yard as yet.
When I was young, the gutters along the sides of the streets were filled with leaves. The leaves were piled so high they covered the edges of the sidewalks. We used to love to walk to school in the gutters kicking up leaves as we walked. They’d whirl in the breeze and scatter into the street. Sometimes we’d pick up a pile of leaves and throw them at each other. We’d try to be the quickest at tossing them, but it always seemed a tie. Leaves got stuck in our hair, but we didn’t care. We’d always end up laughing for the fun of it.
On the way home we’d stop whenever we saw the perfect leaf. Usually it was bright red or yellow. We’d pick it up and carry it carefully by the stem or put it inside a book. At home, we’d quickly get into our play clothes. My mother would bring out the iron and put it on a low setting. We’d take wax paper and our leaves and carefully sandwich the leaves between two pieces of the wax paper then we’d iron over them, the leaves and the paper. The wax would preserve the leaves, and they became our permanent reminders of the bright colors of fall. In the winter, when everything was stark and cold, those leaves reminded us of warmer days, of the beauty of the season and the fun of throwing leaves at each other.
