seed pods along the Gibbon River, Yellowstone: to see larger version, right-click, choose open image in new tab 

This time of year is probably more a start of fall rather than an end of summer but the exact name doesn’t matter that much. If you’re looking backward from here you see the trees starting to turn, the grass heading towards that golden color it gets when it’s ready to drop its seed for the year. If you’re looking forward, the air is cooler, almost cold in fact, and the grass is still stiff from the morning frost. Mist rising off the river is silvery opaque, and its passage downstream is slower, the surface of the water flat and mirror-like reflecting the foliage along its banks. Your jacket is buttoned up to the top button and you can see your breath with every step.

Your focus is on the smaller things now. Getting ready for winter, thinking about the chores you need to finish up now while it’s easy, before you’re doing them in the snow. Thinking about what’s left to harvest, some pumpkins, a few squash, root vegetables still in the ground. Turnips, rutabagas, bunching onions, small, round beets, short carrots, radishes, winter radishes,  mustard greens, leaf beets, bunching onions, Swiss chard, kale, spinach. Maybe there’s Brussels Sprouts, everybody’s favorite, right after any zucchini that needs picking.

Chores that need to be done now are stuff like tilling up the garden, draining the fuel out of the lawnmower so it starts next spring. Making sure the  flap in your long johns isn’t sewn shut. That’s a favorite reminder from your spouse if you weren’t nice enough to her over the summer. Haul that hay in from from that very last field. You really want to plow all the way out there when there’s four feet of snow on the ground.

Yes there are chores to be done, and equipment to be gotten ready or put up for the season but there is also the need to get out there and walk the trails around the place. See how things are winding up. Get your fill of looking at the things you love before they’re covered by winter’s snow. Take in that fall feeling before it changes into that frozen ears, snow down your boots, winter we all get tired of way to soon. Be in the moment.

This is one of the good times of the year. Make sure you make the most of it.