from
The Anglican Digest, WHITSUNTIDE, A.D. 2001
Having lived both in florida and southern California, I have come to an appreciation of the changes in the seasons that is conditioned largely by the earlier lack of any real contrast in weather as the months rolled by on their yearly track. True, California and Florida are wetter in "winter" and the days are somewhat shorter. There was, however, none of the crispness of an early autumn day nor the soft blandishment of the first spring days.
It seems that all five of the senses are titillated more pleasingly and more emphatically in an area such as this. The smells of spring and the first whiff of woodsmoke in the autumn bring home forcibly that the season is changing.
There is a visual difference as well. When Patient Wife and I first moved here in 1972, we were entranced by our first exposure to "the color" -- meaning the turn of leaves in autumn. Our winding road down from Grindstone Mountain to the state road offers vistas of hardwoods that, as she said, nobody would believe if an artist painted them. He would be suspected of having attempted to gild the lily.
Nothing quite matches the taste of the first vine-ripe tomato from one's own yard as summer lurks just around the corner. Nothing is as sweet to the palate as a freshly pulled turnip after the first frost has set the sugar.
Even the sense of hearing has its special relationships with the seasons -- the first chortles of a happy, worm-fed robin in the spring or the mournful, soul-searching howl of a coyote on a cold, moon-lit, winter's night.
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