It is once again time for that annual argument. The calendar
says it is autumn and the weatherman says it is summer. Concurrent
with the autumnal equinox, we are experiencing some of the warmest
weather of the summer.
It is once again time for that annual argument. The calendar says it is autumn and the weatherman says it is summer. Concurrent with the autumnal equinox, we are experiencing some of the warmest weather of the summer.
If you have lived in this area for a while, you are familiar with the pattern – one that is particularly frustrating to high school kids. As if by some sinister design, the good beach weather seems to begin on the very first day of school.
In other parts of the country that have a “real” winter, fall’s arrival is, no doubt, unmistakable by now. Here on California’s Central Coast, late September looks a lot like mid-summer, but there are subtle hints that changes are coming.
I am always excited about the arrival of autumn. By this time of year, I tire of the hot, dingy monotony of summer and look forward to fall’s sharpening edge. I saw the first clues that summer is winding down while I was out on a run. The roadside ditches are sprouting cocklebur plants with their large spiked seed pods that stick in my socks. On the immediate shoulder of the road the gray-green, fuzzy-leafed, ground-hugging turkey mullein is here providing food for mourning doves and other birds.
I am just ignorant enough about botany to be amazed at these fall-sprouting roadside weeds. I can understand plants that germinate in the gentle warmth of spring after a long wet winter, but I am mystified by a plant that chooses to emerge after a long summer of desiccating heat and five or six months after any meaningful rain. You have to respect an organism that starts its life cycle in a ditch in September.
A low-growing blue-blossomed plant that adds spring–like color to the monotones of fall is Vinegar weed. If you see (or smell, as its name implies) Vinegar weed on a hillside or open field, give it a moment of belly-time. Get down on the ground and look closely at the odd shaped blue flowers. If you wait only a moment, a bee will come. When it lands on the flower, you will see the long, high-arching sexual parts of the flower slam down like a hinged door on the insect’s back depositing pollen for transport to the next plant.
There are clues in the trees too. The leaves of the cottonwood trees and the walnut trees are still mostly green but are hinting at the coming change. The buckeyes are dangling their large pear-shaped seeds at the end of leafless branches. Look closely and you can see clumps of tiny acorns swelling on the oaks.
The trill of male crickets and grasshoppers looking for mates is a sign of the coming fall you can hear in your bed at night. A book I have says that a careful listener can distinguish the calls of grasshoppers from those of crickets. Trills with a musical pitch are crickets and those with a mechanical, sandpaper-like sound are grasshoppers. I’m going to listen closer tonight.
Wedges of Canada geese are slicing the sky in our valley indicating a growing restlessness among all birds. The easiest bird event that I have observed that signals the coming of autumn is the arrival of the golden-crowned sparrow. It has a very simple and easily recognizable song that I always hear for the first time in the last days of September or the first days of October. Over the next few weeks, when you wake in the morning, listen for three distinct clear whistle notes that descend in tone. Birders describe the golden-crowned sparrow’s song as lamenting, “Oh … poor … me,” and that’s just what it sounds like.
Is it fall or is it summer? Let the calendar and the weatherman disagree. But, as always, the calendar will win. Look around. Listen around. Smell around. Fall’s coming.
