Fall in the Desert Southwest - Random Thoughts

Our temperatures no longer reach the triple digits.  The clouds are high and puffy and, sometimes, they drip on us...... not as often as we'd like, but they do drip, and we are thankful.

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The soil is no longer overheated.  Planting is possible.  It's still hot enough to need the hose to cool us off after working in the garden, but we're not depleted by the heat.  While the rest of the world is contemplating deadheading and mulching and retiring the garden for the winter, we are looking at our 6 weeks of perfect planting weather.

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That rule about not wearing white after Labor Day puts a kink in my routine.  It is too hot for jeans or leggings, and most of the rest of what covers my lower half is white or tan or wheat.  I've made a personal style decision that white linen tank tops are excluded from the prohibition.

I look at the ads for sweaters, and I sigh.

I see photos of friends wearing long pants and I regret that I still have to shave my legs to go out in public.  

My pinks and yellows feel vaguely foolish; I seem to be entering the orange phase of my closet.  In California, I wore some colors in the fall and winter and others in the spring and summer.  The weather was pretty much the same year 'round; those little changes helped me note the passage of time.

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I'm tempted to roll down the windows of The UV every time I sit behind the wheel.  That usually lasts until the end of my street, about a football field's length of stagnant air with no scent at all.  

Air conditioning made living in the desert palatable; I prove it to myself whenever I think it's time to bring the inside outside.

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The clouds roll in, filled with the remains of a tropical storm,  eyeing the landscape, deciding where to drop their bounty.  The front covered the blue sky, the darkness was starless, the lightning was infrequent but fabulous......but there was no rain.

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That's the desert in the fall.  Shorts and t-shirts and and a delightful planting window.  Migrating birds and lots of baby lizards, a second blooming of roses and tomatoes, the last weeks before the snowbirds begin to arrive.  It crept up slowly this year, with a sparse monsoon to clear the air.  But even light sprinkles bring out the creosote smell and the ocotillo flowers and reminds me that,  white tank tops aside, it really is autumn.