Anticipating Autumn

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This post was written last September, on the first day of fall.
Thought I'd share it again, in celebration of the coming season. 

Finally! It's here. It arrived today. Six minutes ago, to be exact. It's 12:06 am. I've been waiting a whole year, but it was on time. Timely, actually.  As usual. As expected. 

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For me, as a young girl growing up in Toronto, the beginning of summer simply meant that soon enough, autumn would arrive, and with it, crisp mornings that called for cozy knitted cardigans and homemade apple cinnamon muffins. 

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Raking the leaves and brisk afternoon walks around the neighbourhood took care of the extra calories at breakfast, while cute little pumpkins on porches provided guilt-free eye candy of the decorative kind. 

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Of course, autumn goes hand in hand with Halloween, when mini monsters rub shoulders with Disney princesses and comic book heroes, as they roam the streets in search of decadent handouts of bite size chocolate from neighbours in disguise.

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Nothing though, could compare to the impressive collage of muted orangey foliage that always seemed to magically appear out of nowhere-year after year!

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Choppy chunks of copper coloured forests bordered the main roads, where radiant hues of amber and gold flashed in the sky, like floating traffic lights, waking still sleepy drivers, and accompanying them to their journey’s end.

But, on this vibrant island in the Mediterranean, autumn is a season pronounced in quieter, softer tones, sometimes hardly noticed at all, as the transition from hot to cold and longer to shorter days is more subtle. 

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Here in Crete, autumn speaks in low, windy whispers of weak, rusty vine leaves, delicately trembling in the now, cooler breeze, no longer able to hold onto their branches, ultimately letting go and falling down to the dense dry ground below, thirsty for the first rains of the season. 

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The moody season is accented by the harvesting of walnuts, a tedious and tiring job that is only truly rewarded with the promise of rich, walnut enhanced desserts and savoury stuffing at Thanksgiving.  

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It goes without saying, that wherever you are in this wide and wonderful world of ours, autumn has a unique presence and a distinct voice all its own, one that always seems to steal the show with a multi talented natural cast of characters, whose song and dance routines repeatedly leave its audience speechless and spellbound after each and every encore, after each and every year.

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Thanks for visiting
and happy weekend!