Calendars lie

Calendars lie.  At least those in Texas do.  From childhood stories up through Saturday Evening Post covers (anyone reading this old enough to remember the Saturday Evening Post?) to today's NFL halftime beer commercials, we're taught fall means sweaters, fires in the fireplace complete with smoldering marshmallows and Smores, colorful foliage, and lots of leaves that need raking.  

And it's fall now, right?  It arrived September 20-something-or-other as I recall, same as it does every year.  Except we here in Texas usually have none of those things yet.  Sweaters are still safely tucked away in storage boxes, the fireplace is still dark and cold,  marshmallows and Smores ingredients are still on the store shelves, and leaves are still green and holding on tightly.  

Damn!

But....and here comes the good part....this year so far seems to be different.  Dallas on the first day of fall saw rain and a cool front move through.  For the past week the high temps have been in the 80's, and yesterday round two came through.  More rain, more cool, enough that I had to dig around and find a sweater in order to sit outside yesterday evening.  Pinch me!

The cherry on top of this autumn Sunday (sundae....get it?) morning was the flock of geese that greeted me as I walked out onto my terrace this morning.  While directionally challenged (they were heading west), they still maintained their perfect V-formation and were happily honking the whole way.  

As I'm now on the third floor they were right at eye level and so close I think I could  have reached out and touched them. Or more accurately, reached out and had them viciously attack me for such an aggressive move.  (Mean little bastards they are!)

All this leads me to mentally ratchet up my expectations for a REAL winter, complete with snow and....oh, what the hell....smoldering marshmallows on sticks and Smores.

Fingers crossed.  :)

S