Butterflies on the move, a changing bug chorus, cooler mornings, and the first leaves beginning to whisper what’s coming next.
It usually begins before we are ready to admit it.
One evening, the insect chorus sounds just a little different.
A monarch passes through with somewhere else to be.
The mornings feel cooler. Dew hangs heavier on the grass. Goldenrod start partially outlining along the roadside. And somewhere, usually before we are emotionally prepared for it ~ one perfectly healthy green tree slips in a branch of red or gold.
The calendar may still say summer.
Nature, however, has apparently already started packing.
Then we can explain the real science behind the signs: monarchs begin their fall migration south, some insects slow their calling as temperatures cool, plants respond to changing daylight and weather, and leaves begin their seasonal color change as chlorophyll breaks down.
Of course, eventually all those beautiful leaves come down.
Which means somebody has to rake them.
And somebody else has to look at that perfectly respectable pile of yard work and think:
“I should jump in that.”
Some of us apparently never outgrow it.
Creative illustration for Word ’Round Town ~ because a pile of freshly raked leaves still looks like an invitation.
Maybe autumn doesn’t arrive on one particular morning.
Maybe it comes in pieces.
In a monarch moving south.
In the slowing rhythm of a cricket after dark.
In mist hanging over a Northeast Iowa field.
In the first red leaf clinging to an otherwise green tree.
And eventually, in a pile of leaves waiting for someone old enough to know better ~ and young enough not to care.
~Deliverance Hope
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Keep Goin’ ‘Round Town
There’s always another story waiting just around the corner.