Kimberly Brown
We’ve had the first cool mornings, and I’m seeing more orange, red and yellow in the trees. It can only mean one thing: my absolute favorite time of year is here. In fact, my calendar tells me that the first official day of autumn is tomorrow, Sept. 22.
For a lot of people, fall means football. I get that. I’ve spent many fall evenings sitting in high school bleachers, watching kids run up and down the field. Or in my case, drifting off into my own world while my husband watched.
To be honest, I never even knew where the football was, and I finally learned to just watch the pack of players and assume the ball was somewhere in the pile.
I even learned to glance up at the scoreboard occasionally, so I wouldn’t be totally out of the loop.
But even for non-football-lovers, fall in the south is a fabulous time. It seems like our Georgia skies are a brighter blue in the fall, and when you look up through the colorful leaves, the picture is breathtaking. I’m sure there’s a scientific reason for it. Lower humidity or something like that. I just know there’s nothing more beautiful than looking up through orange or yellow leaves to see a crisp blue sky.
I think sounds are clearer in the fall. Maybe it’s because of that lower humidity, or maybe it’s because there are fewer leaves on the trees to muffle the noises. I live near (but not on) Panther Creek in the north end of the county, and after a rain, I can hear the creek rushing in its bed. I can hear the birds clearly calling and the sound of squirrels flinging acorns onto my roof.
Though it’s still warm in the afternoons, every morning I take my dog, Pippi, for a walk, and we both step a little livelier as we breathe in the cooler air. It’s nice to arrive back home, exercised, but not feeling like you need to be wrung out.
There are a handful of things I don’t like about fall. The spiders that seem to be so prolific with their webs this time of year, that I always manage to catch with my face. And their friends the stink bugs, who find their way onto my porch and sometimes into my house. Fall allergies, which I’m suffering from right now. I understand spring allergies, because everything is blooming, but it just doesn’t seem fair that they come again in the fall. And the fact that all those gorgeous leaves with their brilliant autumn colors eventually turn brown and fall onto my roof, into my gutters and all over my driveway.
But those are minor annoyances. I’d still rather have sweaters and long pants. I’d rather sleep with my windows open, even if I have to wrap up in warm blankets. I’d rather see pumpkins and gourds and fall decorations (but not pumpkin spice anything for me, please) and Halloween and corn mazes. I’d rather go to a fall festival or build a fire in my backyard firepit, knowing I won’t be eaten up by mosquitoes.
Fall is my time of year, and I plan to enjoy every minute of it, because I know it won’t be long until the gray days and cold nights of winter are here. But in the meantime, I’ll raise my cup of steaming hot, pumpkin-spice-free coffee to my favorite time of year!
Kimberly Brown is a staff writer for The Northeast Georgian. Reach her at kbrown@TheNortheastGeorgian.com.