Autumn

It is autumn now. A few people have asked if the leaves are beautiful. No. They're not really beautiful yet. A few trees are starting to turn colors, like these on the walk to the bus stop.

And there are some golds and oranges and browns mixed in with the trees when you go driving. We don't really go driving much, but we've been renting a car on weekends. We've driven to three ice skating lessons, for example. And there are places on the road to the ice skating rink that look like nice fall leaves. But there aren't many such places.

I feel like we are supposed to have a spectacular fall here, with so many trees and in so many different varieties. I will feel ripped off if we don't get a spectacular fall.

Just to be sure we aren't already missing that spectacular fall, Jonathan and I took a walk to the canal this afternoon. The walk was nice. The woods are still lovely. But no, not much autumn color. Here is the view of the canal.

You can see a little color behind the bridge, but not much. And there is a tree we can see from our window that has some color.

But not much more. Kind of hoping for all the trees to turn red and yellow and orange at the same time. Does that happen? Could it happen this year? Maybe in another week or two it will happen.

In other news, the weather here is very wet. We had a couple of days last week where a thick heavy, and somewhat warm cloud settled over the place. The air was sticky inside and out, and everything was gray. The air conditioner in our apartment was ineffective in blowing out the sticky gray cloud. We spent two days being hot and wet.

And it then the clouds moved up higher, and it was cloudy the night we were supposed to have the major lunar eclipse. I could log into Facebook and see pictures of the eclipse elsewhere in the country, but there was no view of the moon here. I guess that's a good thing. It means that the apocalypse was diverted.

And sure enough, the major hurricane that could have potentially wiped out all our power lines has now moved off into the Atlantic Ocean.

That was the other weather news. I received messages from church and from the institute warning about the approaching hurricane. Apparently last year a storm cut off power to locals for a whole week. And the year before that there was flooding in the area. We were warned to be prepared with food, water, medicines, and to help others be prepared. But then clouds covered the blood moon, and the apocalypse moved off into the Atlantic. Thank goodness. I think today's walk in the woods was much more fun than it would have been to hunker down for a hurricane.

We did get a lot of rain, though. It rained most of the day Thursday, and heavily all day Friday. And it got cold enough to switch the ineffective air conditioner (attempting to blow the damp warm cloud out of the apartment) to an ineffective heater.

Mushrooms love this weather though. We've been watching these beauties across from the bus stop. 

Wet and orange. Autumn.