It is September. We go back to school. Football returns. With Labor Day, summer unofficially ends.
I was raised with certain truths. September was the month when the days got noticeably shorter and started getting cooler. We started harvesting crops, and thinking about the long, dark, cold winter that is just around the corner.
We began building momentum into the months with all the holidays.
Harvest festivals are not nearly as significant events where I live now. We do not work through the night to glean the bounty of the fields very often. There is a lot less concern about the first hard frost of the season.
I have never been on a really good hayride here in California.
Now I live in the land of endless summer. The days do get a little shorter, but not much cooler. October can be the month with the highest temperatures.
We do not pay much attention to the passing of the seasons in general. They do not really affect our lives as deeply.
Many of the signs of the change of seasons are under our control. Pumpkin spice lattes become available. Empty store fronts become Halloween emporia for a few months. Stores displaying winter holiday decorations is a sure sign that we are moving from summer into autumn.
There will be a point, in a couple of months, when it might rain.
Many of the people who have moved here from somewhere else miss the changing seasons, particularly fall colors. The leaves on the trees here do not really change, except for a few rare species grown in special reserves.
The people from here do start using scarves as fashion accessories.
How do you celebrate the passage of summer into autumn?
What marks the change of season for you?
[Image by Klearchos Kapoutsis]
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