It's Coming!

It is five o'clock in the morning and the temperature in my home is still eighty degrees. It is cooler on the porch but this is mosquito time and I don't spend much time out there during mosquito time hours. There are a few nasty viruses aroud here this time of year.
It is quarter after five and the sky is lightening. A few weeks ago it began to lighten about four-thirty. Lo and Behold, that means that Fall is on the way! The tomatoes on the porch are huge but still very green. The peppers are on their way. Fall, when New England turns into a paradise. The days of sweaters and flannel sheets and wool socks and jackets and beef stew with dumplings and hot cocoa and spiced cider with cinnamon doughnuts. Fall, with ice-blue skies and cool breezes and Fall's palette of leaves. Fall, when the heat is gone and the heat is not on.
Soon will come the day when we gorge on our pre-hibernation feast. Then comes the glory of Winter, with its ice-cold winds, its layers of soft fluffy snow, its icicles dangling from the roof, its chickadees and juncoes dabbing at seeds atop the meringue of Winter. There will be hours spent on the porch without worrying about some virus gifted to us by the Old World.
I look forward to Winter as some people look forward to Spring. That is because I am a Swamp Yankee. Swamp Yankees look forward to Winter because they get ready for it. Food is stockpiled, firewood is stacked, down jackets are taken out of closets, candles are laid out so that they are readily available, and cans of Dinty Moore are almost bursting the cabinets.
There will be walks where the crunch of snow and the brisk breaths of clean air clear the mind and the lungs. It is coming. As the Sun rises later and later each day, it foretells the days when we rise later and later each day because we want to stay snuggled under the wool blankets. Does Summer ever have the word snuggle associated with it ? Winter has "Mama in her nightshirt and I in my cap". The treasures of that day do not come from unwrapping the boxes under the tree, they come from unwrapping the nightshirt.