Hello, Autumn!
/“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”
It’s autumn again. Where did the summer go? Summer was a scorcher of a season here in Las Vegas. We braved the heat, but we were ready for it to end. We’re all stoked for autumn. I’m not fond of the shorter days, bare trees, and all the pumpkin mania that has hit the markets… pumpkin spice this, pumpkin-flavored that. And then there’s all the Halloween stuff right next to the burgeoning Christmas aisles in all the stores. I wasn’t quite ready for all that yet. But autumn in Las Vegas is absolutely wonderful and, oh, so welcome.
The autumnal equinox in the USA occurs tomorrow, Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at 8:04 p.m. EDT… 5:04 p.m. here in PDT-land. I was reminded while reading Melissa Kirsch’s weekly NY Times column that ‘unofficial summer’ in the USA made this summer the longest summer possible… 106 days from the earliest celebration of Memorial Day to the latest Labor Day. Of course, we’ll pay the price for that. We change the clocks and ‘fall back’ to standard time on November 1st, and it’ll seem like winter is upon us way too soon when it’s dark so early.
Despite the later sunrises and earlier sunsets, we’ll revel in cool morning walks at civilized hours, morning or evening, instead of sweating through them at 0400. We’ll plant our autumn/winter garden and maybe savor fresh peas or beans in January. There are festivals galore to enjoy and delightful sun-filled days, perfect for hiking, and picnics, and wandering.
Here in the desert, we don’t have the pleasure of the dramatic color changes in the leaves like I grew up with in New England. But there’ll still be those acorn tops and crispy, though less colorful leaves to rustle through and crunch beneath our feet when we walk. We can relax on our back deck again without fear of being roasted and toasted. We can finally shut off the A/C, and let in some fresh air and sleep with our windows open again.
One of my favorite ‘autumn’ pix taken years ago in October on a Vermont road trip.
Yup, autumn is here, and we’re all in.