I think the hummingbirds left for Mexico last week. I filled the feeder anyway, just in case. The cat next door is getting fat. Because her owners slept in and she thinks she’s missing breakfast, I gave her a few bites of smoked turkey. It is forecast to rain this weekend, yet if the bird baths aren’t full, I’ll carry water out.

My eyes aren’t watering this week, the traffic sounds different and I’m craving chili. As I look out at green trees, verdant lawn and sunshine, I say it must be spring. The calendar says otherwise. It’s autumn and the landscape should be yellow.

A front moved in last night. I stepped out to check the temp and thought I heard rain hitting the foliage. Outside the protective porch roof, I decided not. The sibilance was only the north wind rustling leaves not as soft and pliant as they once were. By the end of the week, they’ll give up and lie down.

Wind from the north is clean. It blows away the Texas dust, Gulf humidity and by-products of manufacturing. Come winter, I can breathe more deeply. 

Texas winter is not typically frigid, yet we freeze. A body gets accustomed to being too hot so a bit of a chill sends us seeking more heat. We wear the same wooly coats, high boots and felt hats that Floridians don in that sunshiny clime, not only because the fashion designers tell us to. We think we’re cold.

We’re driving down to Galveston in a couple of weeks. There, the breeze always blows off the Gulf, it’s always humid and it’s almost always warmer. There, we will board a ship and go even further south, down to the Yucatan where we can wear sun block and go swimming with dolphins.

When we get home, it will be November cold. Nice and cold, so I can wear my wool coat and breathe deep, make a fire and write poems about snow.