Enjoying Fall

I LOVE THESE BEAUTIFUL soft warm, lazy autumnal days, when it gets close to eighty in the day time and down to about fifty at night, nice and crisp. Although some nice, steady, soaking rain would be wonderul, and is just what we need in our drought stricken part of the country, it is nonetheless a beautiful day, if a bit warm for this time of year. As I keep mentioning, the monthof October over teh past coupld of decades has tansitioned from being primarily a cold weather month, to being a predominately warm weather month, almost like an extension of a never ending summer. A never ending summer is precisely what is predicted according to climate change theory, aas climate science. The way things are going, the general trend in recent years, has been for the winters to be less frigid, warmer, and the sumrers to be longer, dried, and hotter, as if we really neeed any more of all that. I can remember more than sixty years of weather, close to seventy, and yes, it certainly seems to me that the climate where I live has changed, quite a bit, and I would hazard a guess that most folks in my general age category (I am 71, a baby boomer) would agree with me, that over the past fifty years, the climate in the lower mid west has definitely changed, with summer getting hotter and longer, and less cold ans snow in the winter time. Around her we used to get snow several times each winter, if only a couple of inches most of the time, real soft and fluffy, the kind that melts fast once it starts to melt. I can remembr when September was always either about ten degrees cooler and less humid than August, but it seems nowadays that September has changed totally into a summer month, more like August, with not a trace of Autumn. Like most people, spring and fall are my two favorite seasons, although I have nothing against summer or winter. WE have many deciduous trees where I love, and they often become beautiful in their bright fall colors. this year, though, is bound to be a disappointment, because with our continuing extreme drought, most of the leaves are gonig to be on the ground vry soon. They are falling fast, helped by the drought. My sister and I used to joke about the fact that our mother talked incessantly about the weather. in any conversation she got involved in, the weather was almost certain to be mentioned, because mother would almost certainly mention it. I seem to be becoming that way myself, late in life; weather oriented, nearly always have something to say about it during a normal, everyday converstation. I love and appreciate the beautiful diversity of weather we have here, hoping that our future weather is pleasant if at times volatile, and that the changes it makes are likewise pleasant.