After a long summer that stretched into both Spring and now Fall, the temperatures have begun to fall. I had a brief period of maybe a couple weeks where I could enjoy having the windows open and fresh air blowing through my apartment, but now they’re all closed save for the one in my bedroom and I’m contemplating turning the heat on. Even in my upstairs living room, normally the warmest area in my apartment thanks to my habitual presence and all my heat-generating electronics (not to mention normal thermodynamics), I’ve started experiencing the dreadful plague that is cold feet and fingers. It’s not all bad, of course. It’s nice to get some crisp, fresh air when I go outside. It’s also quite pleasant to be able to sleep under all my blankets and my comforter without sweating. I’ve also put my flannel sheets back on my bed, so that’s been nice, too. The only real downside to this is how abruptly it happened. We went from low eighties and high seventies one day to a low in the mid-thirties a day and a half later. That, coupled with the sudden arrival of a Rainy Autumn, left my joints and hands in a sorry state after just a bit of manual labor at my job. It got bad enough in the middle of the temperature change that I developed a tension headache that took a full day to finally diminish and go away. Since then, though, the weather has been fairly consistent as it slowly drops toward normal late-October temperatures.

I feel kind of bad for the trees. Some of them had started to slowly turn as the high temperatures stuck around with an occasional dip into the fifties, almost like they were anticipating that it was time for their seasonal transformation despite the lack of a temperature shift. Others showed no signs of the change. Now, a couple weeks in to all that, a bunch of them are racing to shed their leaves while others begin the slow process of changing color. The gradual shift from various greens to the delightful oranges, reds, yellows, and browns of Fall has not appeared this year. We’ve got brilliant red-leaved trees next to entirely green trees. We’ve got a mix of various leaf types I don’t typically see on the ground together, some of them still with faint hints of green in the veining of the leaves as they fall. We’ve had a frost or two and yet so many acorns still stubbornly cling to their trees, almost like they’re being hoarded so they can be dropped all at once. A couple years ago, maybe a few, we had a summer that turned immediately and drastically to nigh-winter, complete with snow. The trees all went into some kind of shock as, in relatively early September, we got a heavy freeze and weeks of cold temperatures before summer reappeared for a few days and then settled into some late-fall tempertuares. This seems worst, almost. We had basically no change in temperature for the month of September and now, halfway through October, the temperatures plummeted and the long-denied Fall arrived, dropping the ambiant temperature to the point where I’d expect it to be at this time of the year if the season had changed smoothly instead of just dropping us straight off a temperature cliff.

I don’t know enough about plants and seasonal change to know what all of this might mean for the long-term health and well-being of the local flora, but it can’t be healthy for the trees to be so quickly snapped from one weather pattern to another. It makes me wonder if these awful seasons will be visible in the rings of the trees when they’re cut down, like other natural disasters often are. I can see the impact in people’s gardens, though, as flowers are denied the slow release of a gradual decline in temperature and have their stalks almost immediately drained into dry husks that snap under the weight of the flowerheads still attached to them. Even the grass is responding weirdly, going a rather grey-ish green and becoming stiff and britte instead of fading and gently wilting. It feels almost like the world around me is sick and the various combinations of colors are trying to tell me something about what’s wrong, about were to look for a solution as the way all these plants grow creates strange almost-patterns of color in what would normally be a field of autumnal reds and yellows and so on. There’s nothing there, though, just hints of a coming shift hidden in the green and the lingering traces of vibrant life in the warm colors of Fall’s beautiful decay.

Still, now that the colder weather is here, I’ve cleaned all my sweatshirts and hoodies so I can wear them without the musty “spent all summer in the closet” smell. I’m also starting to buy some seasonally appropriate food items. I haven’t had much luck with apples so far this fall, but there’s always cider. Beef is also getting expensive enough that my usual meals might be a bit difficult to justify. All of them rely on beef and it isn’t easy to substitute in new meats. I mean, turkey and chicken chili are both a thing, but I’m pretty sure I’d need to change my recipe more than just swapping those meats in. And I’m sure there’s non-beef stews I could make, but I’d still need to get and experiment with new recipes. None of this is strictly a problem, per se, but it’s all work I need to do and the sudden onset of colder weather has left me ill-prepared for it. Hopefully I’ll have the time and energy to put into that sometime soon, but I’m not holding my breath. This has been a tulmultuous couple of months for me and all I really want out of my fall experience right now is some warm cider, a blanket, and some quiet. I should be able to manage that, at least.