Warm Days.

Big wind, early nightfalls—dog in the wind down the hill and back up the other side, our little neighborhood lit in the evenings front porch by front porch, glow riding out, too, from inside, past all those families with all those pictures lined up on all those mantles. You don't see people much on the evening dogwalk—maybe they're all sitting down to earlier dinners than we can abide here at 709—just their empty front porches, empty front rooms. Signs of life: rakes in the yards, strollers on porches, coats and leashes hung on pegs.

The leaves are starting to accumulate in the gutters, along the curbs.

Looks like maybe a little more storm here in the early part of the day, maybe a little more storm as we ride into the afternoon—the radar's trying to fill in, but that front's sliding hard toward us, too, and trying to get past. Tomorrow: sun. Cooler. And I'd say less like an April storm, except that yesterday, in one parking lot or another, that warm wet wind mixing with the smell of the maples turned and the oaks turning, I recognized, powerfully, the smell of standing out in the cul-de-sac in front of my grandparents' old house at Thanksgiving, inventing one more time some way of playing football with only three kids. So we must not be too far afield here, friends and fans of seasons swinging back and forth. This must be normal. Or at least regular. Common. This is a not-uncommon way of riding through fall.