CRYSTAL BALL BY MELINDA WICHMAN

Season observations

We’re enjoying unseasonable warmth right now, but this is usually the time of year when we start pulling the heavy jackets out of the closet and looking for gloves. Gloves that match are nice but some mornings I’m just happy to find a left and a right regardless of the color. More on that later.

It’s been easier to find a heavy jacket, mostly because I never put it away last spring. I put away the rest of the winter stuff but for reasons unknown, one of my winter coats hung on a peg by the back door all summer. Looking back, I think I wore it in July.

The changing seasons are always fun. This year, some days it’s been hard to tell what season we’re in without checking the calendar. Spring felt like winter, summer felt like spring and autumn seems to be rotating through all four seasons on any given day.

We’re at the point in autumn where winter is starting to be a serious consideration. The how-long-can-we-go-without-turning-on-the-furnace game ended a month ago. The summer quilt has been replaced by a thick comforter. And it’s dark at 5:15 p.m. Sigh.

So far, the weather is following the predicted El Nino trend of a cold and wet October followed by a warm and dry November. I’m loving this because like so many other farm families, harvest is no where near done at our place. Rain remains a four-letter word.

School-age kids seem to be impervious to the change in weather. On a recent blustery, gray afternoon I saw several high schoolers walking home after class. They were wearing shorts. I’m probably showing my age but back in the day, the only shorts you saw at my high school in November were in gym class. Our parents would have given us “the look” if we’d tried to head out the door in shorts on a morning when the mercury was barely in the 30s.

Now, about gloves. Every year about March, a co-worker jokes that winter had better be over soon because she can’t find gloves that match. I totally understand.

Every fall, I buy a bunch of those inexpensive little stretch knit gloves. Through the following months they get destroyed and disappear through a variety of means. Thank goodness they are interchangeable as far as left and right go, because by March, the original pairings have totally vanished and I’m left with assorted colors, none of which match. This year I got a little smarter and bought all black ones to start with.

This is the time of year when everyone makes one last desperate scramble to get outdoor work done, knowing Old Man Winter is near in spite of the bright sunshine and September-like temps. I think this December’s holiday light displays should be spectacular, judging from the number of people who have come into our office Monday morning and announced with satisfaction that they spent the weekend putting up Christmas lights.