October 26th, 2018

When I went out early this morning to bring in the newspaper, look what I found at the end of the driveway (in addition to the newspaper I mean).  Autumn Leaves!! Real, honest to goodness, autumn leaves ones!  Wow!

You have no idea what a big deal this is to me! 

First of all, this is Florida.  We don't really have autumn.  We have summer lite.    After a few months of high heat and even higher humidity, we are over the moon delighted to just have simply warm and sea-breezed, sunny days.  YAYAYAYAY!  In fact, occasionally, in the evening, I may have to .......put on a sweater!  Gasp!  Yes!  Shocking!  Not Tim.  He's still too hot.  But low 80's  with much lower humidity feels absolutely lovely to the rest of us.   And if it dips below 75 at sunset, I start to feel chilly, hence the sweater. Still, it wasn't really feeling like fall to me.

No nip in the air. No frost on the pumpkins.  No trees afire with colour.  Not cold enough for chili's or stews or roasts or casseroles or the baking of pies.  Not cool enough to wear jeans or socks or long sleeves during the day.  No jolly jack-o-lanterns decorating front steps (too hot, they will decompose too quickly here) And it's not dreary or gloomy or cloudy at all.  No bare branches or whistling winds, no freezing rain or snow or event the threat of it.  No chipping ice off the windshields of the car.

But a handful of mysterious brightly coloured autumn looking leaves  did the trick for me.  Now it feels like autumn.  At least a little bit.    In the mist of all this green, a few dried red leaves turned the seasonal tide.

It's a bit of a mystery where these leaves came from.  When I looked around the yard, I saw lots of palm trees, jasmine and hibiscus,  live oak, jacarandas and other stuff I do not know what is, but I know what it isn't.  And what it isn't is something deciduous.  Live oaks do produce acorns.  So there are loads of them on the ground. But they stay green year 'round.  So no pretty coloured leaves there.  As I walked to Pilates class this morning, I checked out the neighborhood, sneakily, expecting to see something with either bare nekkid branches or a few colourful leaves still clinging. Nope. Nothing.  Just green green green as far as the eye can see.  A few blossoms of one sort or another and some oranges just ripening.

It's a mystery!  So mysterious in fact, that I took one of the leaves to class with me.  We all crowded 'round that leaf as if it were some valuable ancient relic dug up in my backyard.  Everyone had theories on where these leaves came from.  The most amusing was that some visitors from New England picked a bunch of leaves before they came to Florida, and drove by, tossing leaves willy nilly from their car windows as they passed, snickering to themselves all  the while, fully aware of the questions that would ensue.  That's an awesome theory.

It may not be what actually happened, but that's my favourite idea (so far) and so I'm sticking to that one, until and unless a better one happens along.  If you have another theory, please do share.

Meanwhile, the timing could not have been better.  Halloween is next week, it's nearly November and it's high time I felt Autumn-ish.  And now I do.  Maybe I'll bake a pie!