Any discussion of favorite seasons is a two-horse race in our part of the world. Only masochists prefer winter, which is mild, but unpredictable, or summer, which is predictably miserable.
So that leaves spring or fall and your preference probably relies on how industrious you are.
Spring is for the go-getters among us, those who pounce like tigers released from winter’s cage on the demands of the season: tilling, planting and fertilizing flower beds and vegetable gardens, seeding and weeding the lawn, painting weather-worn home exteriors and attending to countless other assorted duties made necessary by the effects of winter.
Fall lovers, on the other hand, are like children waking from a long nap: blinking and yawning and stretching and not inclined to move too quickly.
Were it not for one of nature’s greatest mysteries — a tree sheds roughly 10 times the volume of leaves it produces — there would be hardly any outdoor domestic duties to interrupt our repose.
It is the season for idlers. You can loiter around outside all day long. There’s nothing to procrastinate about.
We are still nine days from the official start of fall, but even now, when we crank the lawnmower, we are calculating just how many more times we’ll have to cut the lawn this year. Once more? Twice? That, too, is a comforting thought.
Here lately, we’ve been enjoying a sneak preview of fall, with cool, crisp mornings and pleasant afternoons. The low temperature hit a brisk 52-degrees this morning (Tuesday), but summer will return for a curtain call on Sunday, with high temps returning to the low-to-mid 90s.
Even then, with lows in the 60s, it will be morning-coffee-on-the-porch weather.
This is the kind of weather to be exploited. Take a walk, reacquaint yourself with your neighborhood, that place you’ve been seeing mainly through the car window during the long, inhospitable days of summer.
It’s the perfect time to note and embrace the subtle change in the season. Drink it in, just for the beauty of it.
We also suggest you take along a plastic bag on your walks. The colors of fall you encounter along your way should not include food wrappers, aluminum cans or other roadside debris. Picking up the litter you find on your walk is only a minor encroachment on your tranquility and you’ll be working with Mother Nature to make the beautiful fall days even more enjoyable for everyone.
So get out there and loaf around.
No one will judge you.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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