Fall Garden Flowers

     When she was 13 years old, my Aunt Medora remarked to her mother in a letter, “I think when people complain of the weather they just have nothing to say and want to say something…”  I tend to agree with her about that.  Nevertheless, most of us talk about the weather pretty consistently which probably doesn’t say much for our intellect or the quality of our thoughts – at least according to Medora.
     What’s worse, some of us even feel compelled to write about the weather.  Yesterday it was so warm and still – 85 on our porch at noon and not a zephyr.   I kept thinking that it felt like a weather breeder.  This morning it is threatening rain.  “Aha!” I said, said I.  And I looked up weather breeder on the internet.
     “Weather  breeder: a fine day which is supposed to presage foul weather.”  I’m not sure what that “is supposed to” means.  It seems to me it either presages it or it doesn’t presage.  And it did.  Over and out.
     I also looked up “Indian Summer.”  We’ve been having some lovely spates of unseasonably warm weather and the Walking Women of Oysterville have been talking about Indian Summer.  But, apparently that’s not what we were having, at least not according to Wikipedia.org:
     “An Indian summer is a meteorological phenomenon that occurs in the autumn.  It refers to a period of considerably above normal temperatures, accompanied by dry and hazy conditions, usually after there has been a killing frost.  Depending on latitude and elevation, the phenomenon can occur in the Northern Hemisphere between late September and mid November.”
     It’s the killing frost that has been missing.  We’ve had the dry and hazy.  Maybe there’s another name for what we’ve been experiencing.  Of course, the internet explanation went on to describe areas of high pressure, cold fronts, and all those other meteorological conditions that we can get on the weather news any day of the week.
     Now that’s when I couldn’t agree more fully with Medora!  All those maps and charts and facts and figures to explain what is happening or what might or might not happen weather-wise.  It would be so much simpler to just tell us we’re having a weather breeder.  Wouldn’t it?