Fall

It's hard to think of autumn when I'm sweating in shorts and a tank top.  It's too hot to plant, too hot to rejigger the irrigation system, too hot to revamp the containers and replant that which needs more or less sunshine.  The euphorbia along the edge of the roadway are scorched, I hope not beyond repair, but I'm too uncomfortable to help them.

A lot of Tucsonans are sharing these thoughts.  Buying a frame for our new 11x14 FlapJilly portrait by JPetersenPhotography, I had this same conversation with the cashier.  It's not that we're complaining, necessarily.  It's that we're bored.  We're ready for light sweaters and narrow wale corduroy slacks.  We're tired of sleeveless blouses and ready to don our cowboy boots.  But boots when it's 98 degrees, humidity or not, lead to very sweaty feet.  We agreed that we'd have to wait.  We agreed that we were pretty peeved about it.

Michael's has everything Fall on sale.  Halloween decor and Thanksgiving serving pieces and stickers and candles and everything in between, all colored orange and brown.  I wandered the aisles, filling my cart with an owl and a pillow and some small ceramic pumpkins, laughing at the heat rising from the parking lot as I schlepped my treasures to The Uv.  The thermometer might be telling me that it's time to swim, but my purchases announced that it was time to drag out the autumn tchotchkes.

We'll be in Indiana for Halloween with the grandbaby, so my decor will be less scary and more generically seasonal this year. It's not that much of a problem;  I discarded my witches several years ago, along with the kindergarten treasures my now-30-somethings created.  I struggled with the turkey candle holders and turkey platters and turkey lawn ornaments; it seems counter-intuitive to venerate that which I am soon to eat.  For now, they remain in the box.

But the new owl sits cozily beside the farmers and the pumpkins and the curcubits in all their many incarnations - paper squash, ceramic cucumbers, plush pumpkins, etc etc etc.  JannyLou is the only one I know who consistently decorates for each season; last night she told me that Marshall's (a store whose threshold I have never crossed) has lots of cute things you don't need but really want to have.  I may stop in this week, on the theory that you can never have too much of a good thing.

If only I could wear my wool socks and a cut-off sweatshirt while I'm carting things from the garage to the mantles.  Then it might actually feel like Fall.  For now, it will just have to look like it.