Dancing with late summer

In the part of the country where I live, autumn meanders slowly into our lives.  It teases us with the occasional day of weather in the 70's, then unerringly shoots back up to sticky before you know it.  This dance of climate uncertainty straggles through October, leaves still mostly green, grass baked from a long summer, stillness daring the cooler nip of fall to just try and intrude.


I wait for the spell to pass, as do we all.  I begin to doubt that the heat will ever break.  I swear that it has never been this hot, for this long, in any other year ever.  Despite global warming, the weatherman assures us that this is not a record.

Due to a love of ritual raindancing I decide that surely a change in the season could be prompted by my dusting off the lovely copper and plum jackets in my wardrobe.  Perhaps an attempt to don wool (and get strange looks for my trouble.)  Perhaps the conjuring works, as eventually we do (shhhh! don't scare them off!) get a few cooler days, to reassure us that the autumn change will finally arrive.

On one of those days, when you feel that you can safely leave your air conditioned home to go about touring, you might take the time to seek out the few corners that still exist in my overdeveloped state (you have to look hard) where time doesn't change any faster than the weather does.


Where the occasional sigh of Spanish moss as it drops from the live oak branches high overhead is about as clear a sign as you'll get that autumn winds will truly arrive.  Well, maybe.

Oh, I do envy the people that have four seasons.  My heart practically aches when I see pictures of fall colors on the mountains of the Blue Ridge. The misty otherness of Halloween celebrations on the Oregon coast, or my own memory of the bright dance of trees in Washington state.  But for now, this is where I am, and  it does have its own peculiar charm.  The wood creaks just a little more as the summer dampness dries, the cicadas stop their chirps, perhaps they share more certainty that autumn will finally arrive.

PS - A special note of thanks to all of you that are following my blog - I do appreciate it!  I don't post very often, not for lack of intent, but keeping up a blog is rather time consuming and if its an art blog, like this one, then even more so because, well, all those pictures! I do wish Blogger was a little less clunky in formatting and easier to stick the pictures where you want, and the size you want, etc. It's hard to retain a steady readership when you don't post often, and so then one doesn't get much commentary and traffic, so (confessional) it's less motivating to post to begin with.  I do it too - stop following blogs that don't update often.  I'm guilty as much as the next.  Anyway, thank you all for sticking with me even though I'm your friend you don't hear from too often.