Frost on the Pumpkins

This morning there is white frost on the windshield of my black car and, I suppose, on the pumpkins for sale along the main road here in McHenry county. Some of the sugar maples look like huge sprays of red and gold flowers laid against the oaks which are still hanging in there with bowers of green leaves. It's definitely Fall.

It's always interesting to see the changes which come with the four seasons. I missed the seasons when I lived in Southern Mexico and in Las Vegas. There are few sensible changes to the environment in those places as the year passes. Las Vegas is nice enough but its only seasons are "hot and dry" and "warm and dry." Oaxaca has a dry season and a wet season and both are hot.

Midwesterners are formed by the four seasons. We are used to going from shirt sleeves to sweaters to parkas. We don't stay inside because it's blustery outside or snowing.  We just keep on keeping on. It makes us an adaptable people.  It also gives us something to talk about. "Man, it's cold! I can't wait for Spring!"

If St. Francis were here, he'd be outside today praising God for the frost.  Praise Him, too, for the pumpkins which contribute their warm orange in abundance in the fields where they lie among broken cornstalks whose dry leaves wave in the biting wind. Fall is just beginning to bloom.

"He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change. Praise Him."

("Pied Beauty," Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Photo: rmullis, sxc.hu/photo/419624