Falling into the Season

I read with a shade of envy the descriptions from places where the seasons take hold in far more noticeable ways than here how summer is shading into fall there, the fat season of full summer slowly turning into autumn. Growing up in Philadelphia, fall was always my most favorite time of year, with its beautiful rich colors and sharp edge of chill on some days, lazy heat retained by others.
In this place, the seasons are far more subtle, to the point where there is almost no fall that is distinct from winter at all. While spring smells different from winter and the many greens and blooms that eventually appear around February or March, as well as the burgeoning strawberries in the few remaining agricultural fields, tell me something is up, autumn is almost unrecognizable except that the hills and shrubs become unremittingly dry and brown, the seedcases rattle, the tumbleweeds hang like bales of barbed wire in fences. Before I know it, the air has turned cooler, so that I slip without thinking about it into long sleeves and jackets. Nothing obvious or flaming, as in the east, but all the same a change.