Down here in the Big Heat, we have three seasons: too hot, man this is great, and too damned cold. Depending on you level of outdoor activity, too hot can span 4 to 6 months. Man this is great is typically a month or two on either side of the hot stuff. Too damned cold is anything that makes you hunt up a jacket. Once you get used to the heat, temperatures under 60 degrees seem arctic frigid. And if it actually gets down to freezing, then you have to find your jacket and go out and cover up all the plants in the yard. Those plant wrappings, depending on how much you value your plant, can be anything from the spread off your bed, to the old dog towels, to whatever tarps or drop cloths you are lucky enough to have on hand.
Getting back to fall, or as we say down here, "Man this is great" is harder to see physically. We are blessed with perennials and evergreens down here. So what says fall to me are the flocks of butterflies. In the field beside my office are wildflowers and weeds. And as the temperatures cool, the number of butterflies goes up exponentially. I can walk out there in mid fall and there will be flocks of them - the orange ones, the white ones, the black ones, the yellow ones. Oftentimes when I am outside watching them, they will flutter by and even land on me. That feels so special!
I'm thankful for all of creation.
Maggie Toussaint
a resident of the big heat
No comments:
Post a Comment