Guess True Summer Weather Really Is Over

I am looking out the window at the growing number of bare limbed trees across the street.  In less than a week, many of the tree leaves have begun changing colour and are dropping to the ground.  The daily high temperature outside has fallen during the daytimes by between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius over what it was a week ago.  The wind has a cold edge to it that I haven't felt since the end of last April as the spring fought to arrive after the winter freeze.

After I complete my Old Testament readings for this week's discussion I am going to start hauling up the bins of winter clothes and start folding my summer sun dresses for winter storage.  

The first week of autumn is always the most shocking to me.  As soon as spring arrives each year I deliberately forget about snow, ice, dangerous driving and walking conditions, biting winds and month after month of grey skies.  

This is my week of experiencing the shock and nasty surprise that autumn has arrived.  The shock has been exacerbated by the snow forecast to fall upon a wide swath of Alberta over the next 48 hours.   We are not forecast for any snow, but we have almost a week of daily rain and scattered showers with low temperatures to look forward to. It all begins early tomorrow morning. Yuck!

Yesterday as my friend and I walked around the lake it struck me how few geese were still swimming in the water and wandering about on shore.  There was no sign of turtle activity at all. I had to put on an actual jacket for the first time since mid April.  My feet were shod in walking shoes rather than in my usual sandals, because it was too chilly to be waltzing about with bare toes.

Drat!  Summer has been so amazing the past two years and that makes the end of the season even more difficult to process.  Every winter I wonder why I continue to live on the prairies and very summer I find myself exclaiming, "Oh, THAT'S why!" as the sun and warm temperatures replace the freezing drafts of the previous 5 to 7 months.

Well....onward to complete my readings so I can spend the afternoon getting a few summer clothes put away and some of the more autumn-like items ironed and hung up in the closet.