By Donnie Johnston, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
Many people prefer spring, but I like autumn. The warm days, the cool nights, the turning leaves, and the anticipation of blizzards to come.
Spring is usually a muddy mess. Winter refuses to give up, and the freezing temperatures can linger into early May.
In January, you can’t wait for March because you think that is when spring begins. It’s not, and you’ll wait almost three months before you can wear shorts on a regular basis.
Autumn is gentler. Summer gives up its hold gradually with 70-degree days that many years last until Thanksgiving.
Fall is lovely, with hues of brown, red and orange painting the forests. Spring is green (grass) and brown (mud).
Give me autumn every time.
Late October means it is almost time for my fall bath. Like most country people, I bathe twice a year—religiously, once in April, when I remove the long johns I have worn since November, and once in early November, just before I put on the long-handled underwear that I will wear until April.
The old people felt that two baths a year was a plenty. Swimming in the creek kept you clean in the summer. And it was dangerous to bathe in the dead of winter. You might catch pneumonia. Besides, not bathing was therapeutic. If you smelled bad enough, even the germs would stay away.
Occasionally, you might take a quick bath on a warm day in January if you happened to change your long johns, but most people wore the same union suit all winter, so they just skipped the mid-winter scrubbing. I am of that persuasion.
Be that as it may, autumn is here and the leaves are starting to turn. They are late this year, due in great part to the lingering mild temperatures. We had two 80-degree days last week and one where the temperature hit 90. And we have had copious amounts of rain which has kept plants thriving.
But the days are getting shorter (we go back to Eastern Standard Time in three weeks) and this weekend’s frost (at least in my area) started lowering the sap. Fall colors should explode within a week or so.
A warning here. The cool weather has prompted the deer rut to begin and drivers should remember this, especially when on the roads at night. There is an overpopulation of whitetails and during the rut, lovesick bucks pay little attention to vehicles. Slow down and watch for eyes. This is the season when body shops make their Christmas money.
Because of the fall rains, farmers have had a hard time making the final cutting of hay, which should be excellent—equivalent to what the first cutting should have been. And grass is still growing. If we have good rain in November, pasture may last until Christmas or even into early January, providing there is no snow.
I finished my fall plowing last week and the moist ground turned nicely. Last year, due to the drought, I could barely get the plow point into the hard earth. This year it plowed smoothly and evenly.
My wood is stacked and ready for whatever cold weather this winter brings. El Nño and big snowstorms are still the cries of the weathermen, but I’ll have to see it to believe it. Still, I am ready. Wood dried, snow blade ready and the big tractor being winterized.
This fall we are experiencing the result of those two significant April freezes last spring. As we saw in July, the mountain peach crop was almost non-existent and this fall’s apple crop suffered almost as much.
Riding along the highways and back roads, the black walnuts that right now should be staining the asphalt are nowhere to be seen. The freeze got them, too. Only one of the four trees in my yard had any walnuts at all, the one that typically blooms a week later than the other varieties. The high squirrel population may suffer if it is indeed a hard winter.
I also see no Osage oranges (brain fruit), which hang low from scrub trees this time of year. And there are very few persimmons, whose seeds are said to be able to predict the kind of winter we will have.
Yes, we are deep into autumn and on the downward swing toward winter. Halloween is a week or so away and we are only five short weeks from Thanksgiving. We are barely two months from Christmas.
So, settle in. Start that first fire to check the chimney, take in nature’s fall beauty and get ready for a long winter.
