September begins

...again.  This is always my favorite month.  It starts with all the young people going back to school  When I was young, we waited till after Labor Day.

  So when school started here 2 weeks ago, and most everywhere by now, the children are already hunkered down with their new teachers and have finished their first homeworks.

Oct 16, 2011

I loved shopping for new school supplies.  I loved wearing new clothes for a few weeks.  I loved starting fresh in a new classroom, with new subjects and books and the feeling of NEWNESS.

Then the season outside the windows beckoned...with gorgeous days of cooler temperatures, lower humidity, and brighter sunshine.  That's before even the leaves started to change colors.

Oh my, fall is definitely my favorite season, a palette of gorgeous but transient colors.  Freshness.  Spicey.  I know it won't be till Mid-Oct that the leaf peepers come to North Carolina. I grew up in St. Louis, and I guess their fall colors are a bit earlier.  But I can smell the promise coming.

New.

Why do I see the season when the fields die back, and trees turn dormant, as the new season?  I just do.  It's seeing those branches again, old friends while walking in crunchy leaves underfoot.  Laughing with friends I hadn't seen all summer, back at school.  Smelling the first fire, which used to be a pile of leaves beside the curbs...now coming out of a chimney nearby.  Coolness says new to me, after all the sweaty humid days of summertime.

Welcome September.  The vivid season of change that I would miss terribly if I again lived in tropical weather. I am in love again.  With excitement, promises, anticipation, eagerness, dedicated to...?