Early Signs.

There's color high up in the sweetgums, a deep red, enough to be point-outable to The Toad on our walk to work, to school, to whatever you want to call it. They taught him to walk. Or we did. It takes a village. The child walks. The simplest of miracles. That and the leaves turning. He seemed interested, stared up into the crown of the neighbor's tree as we went under, said something that had more than one syllable in it. On my way back, walking without him, I saw that the maples on the other side of the corner have started up, too, are sliding orange at the edges. This is what I'll have to show him later on, once the church bells play the song that says come get these kids, they're yours. Chlorophyll, I'll tell him. Photosynthesis. Shorter days.

If it was this temperature but half as humid, a little breeze, a high blue sky, then all would be right. Or almost all.

The squirrels are so busy out there that if we were almanac-minded here at ANYLF Global HQ, we'd say cold winter, batten the hatches, buy extra firewood, order another flannel shirt. The dog's fur is coming back in fairly thickly. From up at my brother's farm my parents brought back reports of widely-striped wooly worms. Do with these pieces of information what you will, friends and fans of the long-term. Organize them. Use these vocabulary terms in a sentence.

Things I must do this week: Wait for the phone to ring, clean the gutters. Panic and prepare.