Fall in San Diego

Tuesday, October 7th — No, no, no: this is not going to be another recounting of Me tripping, careening, or crashing in my kitchen, only to be miraculously restored to adequate functioning by a big bald super-hero in a black T-shirt and a blue cape with the initials “DK” emblazoned in red, who possesses mysterious chiropractic super-powers. (Okay, I was kidding about the cape.)

There are a lot of Southern California transplants from other parts of the USA who claim that San Diego has no seasons. They complain because “it’s always the same here”. Would they prefer scraping ice off their windshields in the freezing dark before driving through snowy, slushy streets to get to work in the morning? You’ve got to be kidding me! Isn’t that why they came here, to La-La Land, to get away from all that?

As a born-and-bred New Englander who then spent 35 years in Canada, I know all about Fall. A couple of weeks ago, in mid-September, most of the hardwood trees would start showing shades of red and gold and brown throughout the green. Days would still be pleasantly warm, sometimes even hot; but nights would begin to be a little chilly. You’d want to take a sweater with you, just in case, if you went out in the evening. You’d start gradually putting away the summer clothes (the bright or pastel colors weren’t looking quite as cute any more, anyway) and bringing out the darker, richer colors and the slightly heavier fabrics. You’d make sure you knew where your boots were, and your raincoat, and you might want a new umbrella.

By now, in early October, there’d be some leaves on the ground, and a gentle drifting of leaves through the next few weeks. You’d be thinking less about salads and more about chili con carne, and homemade soup, and even… pretty soon… roast turkey. You’d probably take the kids or grandkids and go out to a large, family-owned orchard where you could pick your own apples into bushel baskets from relatively low trees that the kids could easily climb. (You’d use a ladder yourself.) Those apples would go into pies and applesauce, and Waldorf salads, and into lunchboxes and brown paper lunchbags. You’d be talking about whether to go and pick your Halloween pumpkins someplace or just buy them at the supermarket. You’d be weighing the merits of roasting the pumpkin seeds and using the pulp to make homemade pumpkin pie (or fahgeddabahdit… buy the canned pumpkin-pie filling and the frozen pie crust, and nobody would ever know). If you lived in a neighborhood where there were youngish families, you’d be laying in a supply of candy, or something more nourishing but less desired by the children, for Trick or Treat time. There might be discussions of masks versus face paint going on, and conversations about vampire teeth and black capes versus Princess Dresses.

But here, in San Diego, fall sneaks in rather differently. We do have some sort of fake-fall-foliage, by way of the sycamores whose leaves do turn brown and do drop off, but do not become scarlet and orange and copper-colored. I miss that. The light changes notably: it’s dark at 5:45 now, when I get up, and it’s very near dark by suppertime. I walk out on my patio and pick a lemon or two from my little dwarf Meyer lemon tree instead of picking apples. I go to Home Depot and buy a few small pots of yellow and bronze chrysanthemums to pep up the rather straggly-looking annuals in my big pots — but, amazingly, the annuals are still blooming in October! Green is still everywhere. Green will still be everywhere in a month, in two months, even in January!

It is getting a little bit crisp out on some days; today I was glad to put on a fleece track suit instead of a short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. Still in sandals, though! Even here, the summery colors don’t look quite right in the newly-slanted fall sunshine. I’m seeing more deep and dark colors on people, even if the ones who’ve been here a long, long time (or the young ones) still go sleeveless at this time of year.

Some mornings are foggy, and I actually heard rain a couple of nights ago, for a few hours. (A little east of here, in the desert, they are still reporting temperatures in the 90s during the days. What kind of fall is that, I ask you?) The surfers here on the coast are still surfing every chance they get; but then, they will continue to do that throughout the winter.  They’ll just put on some kind of body suits to keep from freezing their various parts off in the frigid water.

Yes, there’s no doubt about it, fall is here. But here’s the good thing, from my point of view: NO HALLOWEEN! I don’t have to fuss with pumpkins, and thank God I don’t have to buy candy; no costumed trick-or-treaters come around to the houses in our sedately aging area.  Do they still even have vampire teeth?

I guess I won’t be shuffling through any piles of brilliantly-colored leaves any time soon. On the other hand, I can go and pick another lemon from my little tree.  Thanks for reading — Betsy