Say Goodbye To Summer And Hello to Autumn

Saturday, September 22, 2012, at 10:49AM it's the end of summer and start of autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere—the Autumnal Equinox.

The last couple of days in my little corner of the world have provided a delightful taste of the fall weather to come.  That crisp feel in the air with cooler temperatures replacing the heat and dryer air shoving aside the retched humidity of summer.  That change to cool dry air brings a renewed vigor, a revived energy to replace the lackluster feeling resulting from the summer heat and humidity...at least for me.  (Do you get the impression that I don't function well in heat and humidity?)

Just as I love the renewal of life in the spring—bright green new leaves on the trees, colorful flowers, the awakening of nature from winter's hibernation—I also love the change of the leaves to their brilliant array of fall colors in autumn.  Unfortunately due to the drought conditions, many of the deciduous trees dropped a lot of their leaves during the heat summer in an act of self-preservation.  I'm not anticipating much of a fall color display this year.

I can say with all sincerity that I'm happy to welcome the end of summer.  Oh, yeah…also happy to welcome the start of fall.  But this year it's the end of summer's heat and humidity that thrills me the most.

The summer of 2011 was brutal.  We ended up setting a new heat record—the hottest summer since they started keeping track back in the 1880s with 53 days where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees and several of those days reaching 110 degrees and higher.  At last year's Autumnal Equinox, the extreme heat of the summer led me to speculate about an equally severe winter with bitter cold and lots of snow and ice.  The reality turned out to be just the opposite.  We had an unseasonably warm winter with several days actually getting into the low 60s.

The summer of 2012 started out mild, lulling me into a false sense of relief, allowing me to think the brutal temperatures of the previous year's summer would not repeat.  Well, silly me.  The heat once again hit along with drought conditions (my poor yard looked terrible, but it did come back to life when we finally got some rain).

So, here I sit enjoying the fact that it's 8:00pm and the outside temperature is 66 degrees rather than 96 degrees.

Welcome autumn...I'm thrilled to see you!