FALL IS HERE

             I can tell in a couple of different ways.

First, baseball season is over….at least for the Cincinnati Reds….darn it!!  I didn’t used to try and watch every single game of the season, but I think there must be a genetic element that gets activated by family life cycles.  By that I mean (jokingly of course) my Dad was a huge baseball fan.  My earliest memories are of running around baseball fields as Dad pitched at whatever game he was playing.  He and his brother Harry tried out for the St. Louis Cardinals in their early life.  Neither made it.  When we moved to Florida in 1957 I remember him lying on their bed listening to Reds games over the radio on WLW.

Then there was my brother, who was a huge sports fan of almost any sport.  He played baseball, basketball, soccer, golf and bowling.  When he moved in with me and Pete toward the end of his days, he was torn between the Rays and the Reds, and he was a fan of both unless they were playing each other.  Then it was always the Rays.

It was after Jim passed that I suddenly had the urge to watch every Reds game.  I guess I figured I had to carry on the tradition.  I haven’t quite figured it out yet. 

Then there are the Halloween decorations that are now everywhere.  Geeze, they even showed up in yards in mid-September.  I enjoy the holiday as much as the next person, but witches and goblins up in your yard in September???  A little too soon in my book.

Another harbinger of Fall is the harvest season is here.  With a long genealogy of farmers in my past, I kind of pay attention to what’s going on in the farm fields around us.  Today is the first day I saw the soy bean fields being harvested.  So glad we don’t live near those anymore.  If you haven’t had the experience, it is dusty, dusty, dusty work.  Can’t even begin to keep your home dust free during this time if you live nearby.  Soon I will see the corn fields also in harvest mode, and of course the farmer’s markets are at full bore. 

Finally….it appears the hummingbirds have headed south.  We have two feeders up, one right outside our front window.  I love sitting in my favorite chair watching them flit over the feeder or fight each other for dominance at the feeder.  Well, it’s been 3 days and no activity has been seen.  I’ll give it a full week and if there is no sighting, will take the feeders down for the season.  I’ll miss them through the winter.  But it will be another reason to welcome Spring in a few months.   

Every once in a while, you get these goofy surveys on Facebook asking different questions.  When I get the question, “Which is your favorite season?” I always answer, ‘all of them.’  I do love them all….how can I choose?