If you can't get him to the mountain...

Autumn is my absolute favorite season. The eye-feast of warm colors contrasting the crispness in the air; the elusive dry smell of dying greenery and burning leaves; the associations of harvest and homecoming.

Which is, naturally, why I live in a state that is utterly bereft of all of these things. God doesn't want to overload me with more ecstasy than I can handle, apparently.

If we are lucky, we will get a cold front or two that drops the temperatures into the 70s or high 60s over the next couple of months. Our deciduous trees lose their leaves, without any preamble or fanfare, about mid-December. We have something of a winter - January typically sees some cold snaps in the 40s that might last a few days - but there's no real transitional period in or out.

So if I want Autumn, I have to go find it elsewhere - hence our traditional October excursion to the family home in Vermont, as often as we are able. This year, after maxing out our vacation budget on the Colorado voyage, another cross-country trip is not an option. So for the last week I've been bringing the mountain to Mohammed.

My dining room. It exhausted my stash of autumnal decoration, which gives me an excuse to go get more for the rest of the house.

Scrapbooking also gives me a good fix. I spent the summer working on last year's beach pictures, but September's arrival called for a change of scene.


Why it took me seven years of fiddling around with paper and scissors and pictures that were always the wrong size to realize I could be doing my scrapping on the computer, I don't know. But at least my graphics degree is finally being put to some use.

It's not Fall. But it's as close as I'm going to get, this year.