Early Dry Season Anyone?

I was sitting in the big green chair in the living room, listening to Blondie talking about that "Man From Mars" who's eating cars.  The windows were open.  The wind coming through it was enough to pick up the chihuahua worth of border collie fur from under the couch and roll it from the living room to the back of the house. 

Maybe it is time to run the vacuum...

Watching the 1980s vintage green and ivory plastic vertical blinds rattle and move around in the breezes, the room is comfortable.  It is a Goldilocks day.  Not too hot, Not too cool.  Just right.

I am hearing from my family up North that they're cooling down fast.  It will be an early winter in the Northeastern US.  The pictures that my cousin Jessica took of upstate New York were absolutely beautiful.  She took a day trip and her camera with some friends to an area of rolling hills and green verdant lands.  After living in the land of palm trees and hibiscus for the last couple years, it was a bit jarring to see so much emerald green in one place.   Florida has its own beauty, but the soil here just does not support thick turf and forests.  The soil here is either built up from compost, trucked in from elsewhere or sand.  It is a beach, or rather it will be again some millennium when global warming has its way and finally turns this strip of land into one of the last hammocks near the coast.

Jessica's pictures had a couple trees that caught my eye.  Everywhere was green except these two harbingers.  They were orange.   Next weekend or the weekend after would be the weekend I would fill the Jeep up and take a drive.   Up the river road from Philadelphia to New Hope for some Mexican food just off of the main streets, then drive to Easton and Stroudsburg PA, and home again via the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

As much as I detest paying tolls it really is much quicker.

That would be the weekend that the colors change.   Roughly October 15th, I'd get out and do this trip and enjoy one last Indian Summer weekend before the frigid temperatures freeze solid the soil and my bones. 

Here on the other hand, I've got the windows open, the wind is roaring through the house and I won't close them until I have to go somewhere.  We seem to be running at least two weeks early for this.  The weather hasn't been predicted to go down into the 60s yet, but it is close.  For the meanwhile, I'll enjoy this.  I've gotten used to the warmer temperatures, and 79 feels quite cool to me especially sitting in a 15mph wind. 

The rattling of the blinds won't bother me since I'll do my usual trick of tying them together with a bit of string while the windows are open.   The breezes are too nice to miss.   This is the weather that the snowbirds come to Florida for.  It will feel warm on their frozen bones when they go out into the noon day sun wearing shorts and tank tops or T Shirts.   We'll point and say they're from Ohio or Vermont and remember when we were snowbirds or wonder what snow really feels like. 

For now, I'm enjoying this.   Sipping a very large mug of half caff coffee, munching on a cookie that I used to stir it, the weather feels fine and the breezes are wonderful.

Enjoy!