With the lingering summer season in the northwest, I was surprised to drive down my street yesterday and suddenly find all the trees dressed in new colors. As though some giant hand had pressed a button marked autumn, the season paraded itself in shades of yellow, orange and red.
The change surprised me, since I had only finished making the concord grape jelly and stored my canner last weekend—a sure sign at my house that summer has ended. But wasn’t it just last week temperatures hovered in the eighties? Did the trees wait for me to be through so they could change their clothes?
Autumn is one of my favorite seasons of the year. Like spring, the weather remains mild and the colors around the yard leave me awestruck. I need the transition time. Like a squirrel, I stash things away for the coming winter. Percale sheets are exchanged for flannels, flower bulbs are mulched under layers of leaves, and windows are washed one final time before the rain drizzle grays out the sun.
The seasons are a gift to us, part of the covenant God made with Noah after the flood. In Genesis 8:20-22 (NKJV) Noah offers a sacrifice to God for saving his family. God, in turn, says he will never again curse the land man walks on, nor will he destroy every living thing. Instead, God says, (vs. 22) “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.”
This verse makes autumn much more special, knowing all the brightness and flaming color is an ordained time for us to prepare ourselves for winter.
Not to mention a banquet for our senses and a salve upon our spirits.