Fall has fallen with a vengeance here in the hill country. Temperatures, mild all summer, came slamming down to the forties seemingly over night. Last night, I lit the wood burning stove for the second time and it is only mid-October. When I walked out the door on Thursday morning, I thought I'd been worm-holed to somewhere outside of Dublin, Ireland. The temperature was a balmy forty-two and a steady drizzle was falling. Why is it like that on the days I can't just go back to bed?
Despite the rains that have been with us all summer long (why is it perfect garden weather all summer the one summer when I can't work in a garden because I have a new baby?) and are continuing unseasonably into the Autumn, Kentucky is a beautiful as ever. The trees are beginning to turn, so that each hill is a palette of greens, yellows, oranges, and russets, with touches of bright candied cherry red. The unfortunately named "Swamp" Maples are wonderful for this cherry red shade, many of them bragging green, yellow, and red leaves all at once.
But the best thing about Fall this year is that my roosters seem to hate it. There's nothing quite so fulfilling to my day as stepping out the door into early morning's cold temperatures to be eyed resentfully by three pairs of beady little rooster eyes. They hate me because I found them roosting on my potting bench a few nights back and took a broom to them. After I hit a few fowl balls, they decided maybe they better stick to their coop, where they are freezing their feathered butts off. Sooner or later, I'll take pity on them and fit up their heat lamp, I suppose, but for now I just superimpose their scowling images over the fall foliage background in my mind's eye and laugh all the way to work.
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