Do you waver between choosing Summer or Fall as your favorite season? If so, it seems Mother Nature aims to please everyone these days.

She keeps toggling the temps between Summery warmth and Fallish chill. Yesterday was blustery and cold and today warmed up to be just perfect – in my opinion anyway.

While I’d have preferred a long walk at the Park, I had a hybrid type of walking day, factoring in grocery shopping and mowing the lawn, but all the while racking up steps on my pedometer.

When I left the house this morning it was downright chilly and I was wearing a coat. At Meijer I grabbed a cart and got the majority of my shopping done before it got too crowded in the aisles. Then I set the cart aside and went “travellin’” around to get some more steps in. The only problem was that after I’d done three laps around the perimeter of the store, I could not remember where I left the shopping cart. Oops! I usually park it in the produce while I dash to and fro grabbing items from other aisles. But I didn’t that today because the big boxes loaded with pumpkins were in my way, so … I had to embark on a search-and-rescue mission for my loaded shopping cart – not so easy with loads of shoppers on a Saturday morning . I even went to Customer Service because one time they thought it was abandoned and took it there to await its owner and/or reshelf the items. “No, they hadn’t seen a cart, but good luck” they said. Finally, I found it, happily intact.

Like the weather which fluctuates between seasons these days, that is Meijer’s M.O. as well. They are all decked out for Halloween, right down to the scary skull lawn ornaments but the Christmas decorations are starting to fill the shelves as well.

I stocked up on leaf bags, though the trees around my house haven’t shaken off their leaves yet, and, I treated myself to a new snow shovel … now, that’s really thinking ahead, but the last few years, snow has arrived in mid-November, and stayed ‘til Spring.

The Fall season brings pumpkin-flavored everything – now there’s even pumpkin egg nog. I’ve never tried pumpkin egg nog and decided to pass it up, but, I must admit that I paused briefly when I saw the holiday eggnog. Isn’t that a little early – why, the Christmas songs on WNIC haven’t even started yet.

Later when I went out to cut the lawn, I kept the pedometer strapped on to measure my steps while doing the yardwork. I thought about putting the gardens to bed this weekend, but I felt a little guilty doing so. The roses are still hanging on, looking just as beautiful and vibrant as if it were mid-Summer. On the other hand, however, the Coneflowers are ugly with their brown and dead cone-like centers looking like oversized burrs. I saw a few spunky-looking Black-eyed Susans peeking out between the roses, and I had to admire their tenacity, as I’ve not given my garden much TLC this year. And, speaking of tenacity, I still have bright-yellow dandelions thriving in my front yard on this October 10^th.

By the time I came into the house, I had abandoned the coat and was in short sleeves. The warmth of the sun felt good on my head and those gentle rays helped sustain that golden brown tan I have on the nape of my neck and forearms just a wee bit longer, because all too soon our bare skin will be covered up and we’ll all be looking like Swiss cheese again.

[Image by photographer Stefan Kunze at Unsplash]