Where has September gone?

This is a view of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was the last place I lived that had an autumn to remember: beautiful colors, cooler days and nights, and barely a hint of winter.  Autumn there seemed to last until spring, at least compared to northern Michigan.  Allen and I moved to Albuquerque in October 1995, leaving Petoskey in a snowstorm and arriving on a warm and sunny afternoon.  We soon found a house and began to plant a garden, knowing that things would grow year-round.  Yes, we had cold weather during the months that the calendar said it was winter, but the days were sunny, snowfall a rarity, and when it did, we had passive snow removal: the sun.  In the six years I lived there, it never got below zero.  It rarely went below freezing during the day.

One of my fondest autumn memories was the roasted chiles that were sold from vendors parked in the corner of supermarket parking lots.  They tasted great on everything, and the smoke smelled like cheap pot.  Or so I was told.

We do get autumn here in Florida.  The daylight is shorter and the humidity drops, the rainy season tapers off, and it feels a lot like a nice summer day in northern Michigan.  But we don’t get the spectacular color of the trees.

Wherever you are, I hope you take the time to enjoy the change of seasons, however it shows itself.