“All at once summer collapsed into fall.”—Oscar Wilde
A few days ago, a friend posted this quote from Oscar Wilde on her Facebook page. Mr. Wilde’s words made perfect sense to me.
We seem to have collapsed into fall during the last two weeks. One day, we were suffering with a relentless sun in cloudless skies and 90℉ heat and high humidity, then all of a sudden, evenings and mornings temperatures dropped into the 70s, and we received several days of rain.
Almost overnight, my “Autumn Damask” rose bloomed for the second time, the leaves on our native dogwoods (Cornus florida) turned blush pink, and my basil plants took on their end-of-season sickly, yellowish hue.
Now, the autumn equinox has occurred, and fall has officially arrived. It’s not like we didn’t know it was coming. The days have been growing shorter for weeks; it’s just that fall seemed to happen early and all at once this year.
This seasonal change isn’t a bad thing. We can put on our flannel shirts, light the firepit, and ...