My Favorite season.

Today I want to talk about my favorite season. Now don’t get me wrong! Just because I have a favorite season, that does not mean that I do not enjoy the others. In fact I intend to outline the good things involved in ALL the seasons. But I do still have a favorite. Let me begin by talking about all the seasons. Let us start with the “beginning” of the cycle, Spring! A wonderful season with new life, new birth and rebirth. The trees get new buds, the flowers grow and bloom, the rain falls down blessing the earth, the animals start to come out and all the soft green and growth has a unique beauty that is never seen in any other month. The smells of spring are so fresh and clean. The freshly turned earth, the new flowers and all. It is a truly awesome time of the year. And the holidays involved! Easter with it’s jelly beans, Chocolate Bunnies, and marshmallow peeps. Or St Patricks day with all the “wearing ‘o’ the green” and fun. Or Valentines day with the protestations of love and the promise of future love. Baseball starts in the spring and the promise of what is to come is very palpable. It isn’t long until spring flows into summer, our second season to look at. This is a time of heat and play. There is work involved but it really seems almost a peripheral thing. We start to see the harvests come in and we also see more time to do things like go to the swimming pool or the watering hole or the creek or wherever and do all the water sports. Traditionally now it is a time of vacations and sports. School comes to a close and parks open. Baseball is now in full swing and is rapidly heading to the big Finish. We go to the theme parks and the lakes and we play. We get out in the sun and work on all the projects that have been waiting for our attention for so long. We go camping and we enjoy Children’s lemonade stands. There are Rodeos and Baseball games and fireworks and campouts and cookouts. For food/s we look at having grilled chicken, Burgers, Hot dogs, and Steaks. Fresh Corn on the cob and cold watermelon, Freshly churned Ice cream and snow cones. The Holidays include Memorial day, Mother’s day, Father’s Day and the Fourth of July. Truly a time of fun in the sun. But then there comes Fall. Our third season of consideration. The weather is cooling off. The trees start to change colors to the reds and golds that they have gone through before. The wildlife starts to slow down as they finish their work in preparation for the winter and they start going into hibernation. Football has started and we start to drink Apple cider and eating candy apples and popcorn balls. School is back in session, and the air takes on a new crispness. All the harvests are in, the canning and preserving is finishing up and we start to look forward to the next year and even the next season. We start to build (and smell) fires to keep us warm. There are harvest parties, hayrides, and a kind of restfulness. We have the holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving. Raking of leaves and playing in them. This is a magical time of the year. Which leads to the final season. Winter! White and snow and Ice. A time to play in the snow; make snow angels and lick icicles. Snowmen start popping up and colored lights come out and trees move into our houses and a whole new music start ringing through the air. When we finish with our play we come in to enjoy hot cocoa, Candy canes ginger bread houses and freshly baked cookies. We look forward to the BIG event of winter, Christmas! With all the things that attend. The presents, the dinner with Turkey and Scalloped potatoes, Green bean casserole Sweet potatoes, Pecan and pumpkin pies and Eggnog! We sing carols, we go to plays and cantatas and parties. There is a new sense of magic and wonder as we watch the little ones gape and wonder at the lights and the presents wrapped in all the colors. There is a sense of bonhomie a general feeling of wanting to make life better for those in need. We hang stockings and we all feel an anticipation of good things to come. We feel linked to the past in ways that we never really feel through any of the other seasons as we read A Christmas Carol and watch A Christmas story. We think of the ways that Christmas has been celebrated for centuries. If we do not celebrate Christmas there is still something for us. The Menorahs and Kwanzaa candles glowing and adding their lights to the riot of colors and lights that adorn the houses where Christmas is celebrated. We get an up close picture of the joy that children feel, the magic that they sense and we try to keep that alive, for them and for us with tales of Christmases past and reading the stories that were written before in celebration of this time. We relive our happy memories of those days from before as we live vicariously through the kids, Or just through our own joy, through this time. So which one is my favorite? To be honest I love all the seasons to some extent many for the reasons listed above. My second favorite time is probably Winter. With all the food (and presents) of Winter, and the things linked with that, I find myself particularly enamored of the links to the past that fit in there, to think that some of these traditions have been practiced for centuries. It makes me feel linked to the past AND the future. But I think my favorite time is Fall. It is the best of them because it takes the best of Summer and Winter and puts those together with it’s own brand of style. There are smells that you will NEVER smell any other time. You start anticipating the fun (And presents) of winter and you find yourself linked to the past in a similar way as you might during the winter. And sometimes the anticipation is better than the actual event. There are still lots of outdoor sports, there is magic in the falling leaves and color changes and weather changes. There is anticipation for Halloween and Thanksgiving. You get the turkey dinner and the pumpkin pie and the scalloped potatoes and the Eggnog of winter. While still enjoying the warmer days of late summer where It is still warm enough for a few last grill outs. There is still corn on the cob and you can finish off the watermelon in the fridge or the ice creams and Popsicle’s that are still in the freezer. And yet this is THE time to enjoy Apple cider (cold and Hot) and Candy Apples. (you won’t find those in your stocking) and best of all, The bugs all go away! If you compare a year to a day Spring is sort of like when you wake up and you are still getting ready for the day Summer is the middle of the day where you are the busiest, working and playing hard, facing the heat while dealing with the chores. Winter is the late evening and night where you sleep and rest in preparation for the coming dawn. This is when you Dream and hope. But FALL! Fall is the early evening hours. When the fireflies come out, when you slow down and look back on the day and say “It was good!” When your dreams have all been met (or failed), when you rest and know that you worked hard and you can now enjoy the fruits of your labors. It is that drowsy between time where you are not really asleep but you are not really awake. When you are comfortable no longer tiring yourself out but you are tired enough that you feel happy. And that is why it is my favorite time of year.