We have left the glorious season of summer behind and are now firmly implanted in the season of fall, also known as autumn. I don’t know why this season is the only one with two names, but I bet it’s something political. What I want to know is why the N is autumn is silent. What does it have to hide?
Fall is certainly a season with positives and negatives. On the plus side, fall is the time for the World Series, the football season, basketball season, hockey season, and if you are into it, the new TV show season.
Fall is also harvest time when all of the vegetables you planted in the spring are on their last legs, except for the zucchini, which will produce fruit in up to a foot of snow. Apples are very big in the fall and that means apple cider, apple pie, and apple shoemaker…I mean cobbler. The highlight of fall is, of course, Halloween. This is the only day of the year that children are allowed to talk to strangers in the hopes of getting candy. These things all sound like fun but fall also has a few drawbacks.
Fall signals the annual leaf migration when they leave their homes in the trees and migrate to the ground. Early in fall, the leaves on the trees change color and paint the landscape in glorious shades, but soon enough, they fall. They fall in your yard to the point that your lawn will be carpeted by a foot of colorful fallen fall foliage overnight. This can be a problem. You can either rake all of your leaves into a big pile and jump in it, instantly regretting not picking up after the dog before you started raking. Or, you can use a power blower, and, working at night, blow your leaves into your neighbors’ yards. If neither of these alternatives appeal to you, here are a few more suggestions for your leaf disposal.
Sew two bedsheets together, forming a big pillow case. Stuff the case with leaves and sew it shut. You now have a handy guest bed for guests that you don’t want to stay too long.
Use leaves to make your Halloween costume. Cover yourself with spray adhesive and roll in a pile of leaves. When somebody asks who you are, simply move a bit and say, Russel,
Leaves make fine insulation for your home. Fill the attic with leaves at least a foot thick. This will save you money on your heating bill and provide a potpourri of rotting vegetable matter.
Now, let’s leave the leaf and look at the real folly of fall, and by that I mean the upcoming end of this year’s Daylight Savings Time.
November 5th marks the end of DST this year. On this day, at 2:00 AM, time will not only stand still, it will go backwards. This is the time that the United States Department of Messing With Our Heads decided that we are not quite depressed enough, and make us re-set our clocks so that it gets dark at 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon.
Daylight Savings Time was invented by Benjamin Franklin, allegedly to allow more time for agrarians to tend to their crops. But when the clocks turn back again, my lights go on sooner, and that means my electric bill goes up, and guess who discovered electricity? Benjamin Franklin! Hey was just trying to put more dark in the day so he could sell more watts. He could be president today.
Finally, fall means that I have to change the batteries in my smoke detectors, even though they still have some juice in them. You change the batteries before they have a chance to remind you to change them by beeping in the middle of the night.
Fall is here and we need to embrace it, and not in a weird way, like hugging a scarecrow, but in a way that adds vodka to your apple cider so you can put the rake down, sit back, and enjoy the colors, or, as I like to say, “Fall, it’s a ball.”©️
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