November seems to be racing by as quick as life itself and I don’t, for the life of me, understand why. Here it is the 10th day of the month already and it only just began. At the office Charlene and I commented last week about how long a particular day had been and then it was over and gone and it seems like so long ago.
Same thing happened at home where wife Danny and I agreed that it had been a particularly long week, and again I don’t know why, and now it is gone and Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and Santa Claus is packing his sleigh I feel certain.
On a positive note, we did away with Daylight Saving Time on Friday at our house and this year come Sunday I think I actually felt like I really did get an extra hour of sleep. Of course that isn’t the case because we were up late — late for us — Friday and Saturday and like I said we had already changed the time.
I do wish the powers that be would, more sooner than later, stop changing the darn time back and forth. I, for one, like the daylight! Danny likes to walk after work and I like to try and work after work but it’s hard to do either one in the dark. Plus, it gets really dark at our old place inside, and outside. I guess it is that time of year.
Last week I was pulling a pine limb off my dad’s roof and noticed the tree by his patio was really beginning to show its fall colors. I think it is a maple or something similar, but not really sure, but it is very pretty when the leaves turn.
Along that same line, though, I don’t think I’ve noticed a drastic change in the woodland colors this season. Perhaps I’m a little less observant but it does seem that by this time of year there are usually some head turning, color turning trees.
Likely now that I’ve stated that publicly every tree I see will be bursting with yellow, and orange, and red.
We have oak, sweet gum, and pine so about all we see this time of year is brown leaves, brown straw, and cones and sweet gum balls everywhere. As a child we used to do all sorts of things with sweet gum balls, but now as an older adult I can’t think of a thing they are good for except shooting out from beneath the lawnmower, and causing a grimace when stepped on barefoot.
We’ve also got some ancient cedars and crepe myrtle but there isn’t much to see from them in the fall. The crepe myrtle is pretty barron now and the cedars drop a few limbs here and there but other than the swings and chimes hanging from their branches they aren’t good for anything else. Two of them do drop a big hand full of berries and needles down my back when the mower rushes under them and when it’s hot and I’m shirtless they go all the way down my back. All...The...Way!
The one, and only, big pine that survived Hurricane Katrina is of the short leaf variety and it is really old too. It also drops big ole limbs every time the wind blows and I swear it should be nothing but a stump by now but in all actuality we can’t even tell from where the limbs have fallen.
And, when it comes to pine cone production this tree is a master. The ground beneath it is constantly covered with the prickly things and 24/7/365 days of the year it is doing this. At the same time a glance up into the branches reveals clusters of more to come down.
Maybe we should be harvesting the pine nuts and go into the pesto business. Instead, though, they fall victim to the lawnmower as well. I’m gonna need a new mower soon.
The one problem we don’t have in Sebastopol this time of year, however, is leaves on the ground. Sure, they fall, but they seem to disappear over night. Our place is kind of up on a little hill and there is a wind blowing pretty much constantly. I suppose those autumn leaves falling, falling to the ground, get caught up in that wind and end up some where over around town. It’s not that far as the crow, or dove, or redbird, or buzzard fly. We’ve got a bunch of all those and some other critters too.
