Looking Forward to Fall

Where we live in Texas, the last official day of summer doesn’t really mean anything. Here we are in mid-September, and we beat all records at a whopping 106 degrees yesterday. I heard somewhere that this is the hottest summer ever, anywhere in Texas. And it just feels wrong. School started a few weeks ago and all the fall catalogues are coming in the mail. I should be pulling our sweaters and scarves out of storage, putting soup on, building a fire in the evenings, not applying SPF 209 and making sure I brought a sunhat for the baby.

One thing that is a relief, though, is planning for our fall garden. I spent a few hours pulling out all the dead hangers on a few days ago. In the next few weeks we will till up our beds, adding in plenty of nutrient rich compost. We’ll water it in, let it rest and breathe, recover from an excruciating summer. We hope to get the kale, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts in by the end of the month. Then, October will see us putting in beets, carrots, and spinach, along with a variety of herbs. We will make and hang a new birdfeeder, clean up our tools, buy a new attachment for our hose. We will lift our faces to a softening light, take note of a certain smell in the air, and maybe, if we’re lucky, put a sweater on and look forward to the milder days of autumn.