Summer, is this our final fling?

In true Midwest fashion, the weather has been all over the place this past month. We’re past our first and second frost, and my maple tree stands bare, yet I was able to pick a fresh strawberry yesterday afternoon. I haven’t drained my rain barrels yet, and there are a few branches still to trim before the final brush pickup of the season.

Sunrise over the bare branches of an autumn maple tree.

Today’s high was 76 (around 24 if you think in Celsius), and I took probably the last opportunity to walk out to the mailbox barefoot for this season… tomorrow’s forecast is promising a high of 40 (4.4 Celsius), followed by comparably cold weather into the foreseeable future. We have not, however, had snow yet, and I recall that my first Thanksgiving weekend in Illinois was sweatshirt weather, so it really could go either way at this point.

Either way, we are seeing beautiful sunrises and sunsets this time of year (OK, only one of us usually sees the sunrise), and look forward to those cold days in winter when we look out at the pawprints in the snow.