Autumn in California

It has been four years since I have been in California during the autumn. In other parts of the U.S., autumn is in September or October, but in California, it is in December. That is, in northern California. In Southern California, it is never autumn: LA only has a brief rainy season January and February. But in the Bay Area, I am enjoying a real honest to goodness Fall, where the leaves change colors and the air is crisp and cool. Today is an especially breezy day, and the leaves have been swirling around, everywhere I go. I keep saying to Palmer, "Look! All the leaves on that tree have turned yellow!" and "Look! All the leaves on that tree have turned red!". He barely looks up from his book, because of course he's seen it every year now, but for me it is noteworthy.

Of course, since this is California, when the leaves fall, the city takes care of cleaning them up. An army of men with leaf blowers are scouring the streets and roads and parks, blowing all the leaves off of the pavement, and onto the grass, or into big piles, to be picked up later by huge trucks with gigantic vacuum cleaners on the back of them, that suck up all the leaves. The leaf blowers are amazingly loud -- my cat went and hid under the bed when they were working on my street a few days ago -- since they are gas powered engines strapped to people's backs. But they do the trick much more effectively than a broom or water or anything else. Leaves respond to the wind, as they are meant to do, not caring if it is artificial or real wind blowing them around.

So although the leaves come and go, what one is reminded of here in California is that the trees, and the roads, are eternal.