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September 8, 2009

Happy Autumn Walnut Creek!

Okay, it's not officially the start of autumn--yet. But it is the day after Labor Day, which in many people's minds, the start of the slide into autumn and then winter.

Did you feel that special, almost fall-like chill in the air this morning? And yesterday, I noticed a large number of oak leaves carpeting my back yard patio. On Friday, I noticed that the leaves on a Japanese maple near my workplace were starting to turn orange.

The sign on a Halloween Spirit store has appeared in the windows of the former tire shop at Mt. Diablo Boulevard and Locust Street, prompting my son to ponder what he'll be for Halloween.

I love autumn. It's my favorite season. Bye bye summer. I still retain that schoolgirl sense of the calendar: that autumn signals the start of a new school year for students and the promise of new beginnings for everyone else.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm with you, Soccer Mom! Fall/autumn is the absolute best-est season there is. It doesn't hurt that my birthday is in October to add to the festiveness... It's too early for harvest decorations yet, though. Folks need to chill on that til 3rd week in Sept or so.

Thud said...

Autumn in WC is a pleasure as here in England autumn tends to be rather wet with resulting wet nad sticky piles of leaves. In WC a light breeze sets the leaves off down the street tinkiling away....I look forward to arriving back in october.

Martha Ross said...

Dear Anon 12:45 p.m. I'm a total sucker for all the lead up to the holidays. I say it's never too early for decorations, even though I'm not exactly the decorating type. But if you are, go for it.

Thud,
I actually spent a very happy October in England. This was way back in my fancy free days when I was tripping around Europe and England. Met my parents and we did a driving tour of the Cotswolds, then went over to Wales. I ended back in Bristol, where I met up with a friend I had met traveling in Greece. Yes, it was rainy, but I've always liked rain, and maybe being Walnut Creek born and bred, I found it to be refreshing and atmospheric and romantic. Staying in those cosy inns--out of an Agatha Christie novel. With dinner by the fire...
Well, that's a tourist's view.
I guess if I grew up with that, it might be different.

And back on my anglophile kick. Just finished reading Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. It's a book I've been wanting to read for a long time.

And speaking of Brit lit, autumn, and Romanticism, I love the opening lines of Keats' poem Ode to Autumn:

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;"

Anonymous said...

Soccer Mom, do you recommend "The French Lieutenant's Woman"? It's been on my list, too.

Martha Ross said...

Yes, I very much do. It's a smart page turner, an intellectual, historical romance with a post-modern, meta-fictional twist. The writer aware of the conventions of the Victorian novel, commenting on them, but getting caught up in them.

Now, I've got the Collector. Also by Fowles. A twisted psychological thriller

Thud said...

SM...I may have been a little harsh, as autumn here when the rain clears and the mist rises can be rather atmospheric especialy as my local village dates back over a thousand years and is very pretty.