Now

Autumn is coming to my little cottage. Evening falls earlier; the sun has set by 6:30 and the light is completely gone an hour later. Geese that have summered in the north are returning to the pond to feed and rest and discuss amongst themselves the next leg of their journey. The song birds have all but disappeared save for the few species that winter over. The mornings belong now to the crow and the jay, both raucous birds, strident and bossy.

Sweater weather, my mother called the cool mornings and equally chilly evenings. Mid-day finds me in shirt sleeves still, but I've changed out the bulk of my summer clothes for warmer ones and there are socks on my feet for the first time since May.

I am often melancholy at this time of year - not sad, really, just reflective, remembering with poignancy the excitement of spring and the warmth and lengthening light of summer days. It's true that my melancholia is always tempered with memories of days so hot I could not move and nights so warm that sleep was impossible. Still, there isn't a season I don't like which is why I remain a New England girl. It's just that fall brings with it an end of the growing season; an end to the roses and phlox, the plethora of garden vegetables, the long, lazy evenings bright with stars and cricket music. It brings, too, a hint of winter, of long, cold nights, of snow and ice and freezing rain.

Now, when the leaves of deciduous trees are great splashes of color against faded blue, when the air at noon is still mild and hazy, when a few small birds still search the roadsides for seeds and great swirls of starlings paint designs in the evening sky, now is the moment to admire and hold close. Too soon it will all change.