Don't Smirk! Santa Barbara HAS TOO Got Fall Color!

Don't believe everything you hear as a kid. It turns out that deciduous trees don't turn yellow and orange and red because forest dwellers paint the leaves by the light of a full moon. I vaguely remember seeing that in a cartoon, but even as a young child, I was skeptical. Where, I wondered, would the Keeblerians get all that paint? How could they organize and execute en masse? It's not like they could text.

Click for the rest. Some very hot color going down in the 805!

I've Been Cheated!!!

I’ve been cheated, hoodwinked, chiseled, deceived, cozened, deluded, lead on, betrayed, befooled, jacked, humbugged (I also found a great thesaurus program on line)!!!!! Earlier this week I had two days of fall weather—cool, sunny, breezy days; chilly nights. I even wore gloves and a cap on Wednesday when I took Biff the Wonder Spaniel out before sunrise.

When we got home, the local weather guy was showing upper 70s and low 80s for this week. Crap! Today feels like we’re in the low 90s. WHAT THE @$#$*&? IS GOING ON HERE?

I don’t like sweating. I hate the feeling of moisture between me and my clothes and it’s not practical to conduct my daily affairs in the au naturel (thanks, new thesaurus program!). I plan my lunch-hour walks based on the shadiest streets; I engineer open window strategies to maximize the slightest increases in air movement. My mastery of thermostatic manipulations is held in awe by co-workers, some of whom wonder if I’m curing a side of beef somewhere in my office.

I like nothing more than a slight chill in the air, sun on my face and mucking about in shorts and a thick Henley. You lizards can keep Tucson; this mollusk is hitching to Portland.

But the big news is that my “harbinger of winter” is out of whack. A few years after I got into plants and such, I made the correlation that when jade plant (Crassula argentea) bloomed, it heralded the end of summer and Billy weather. But this year it’s anyone’s guess.

Tuesday night I was going out the door for an “I hope Obama kicks some serious butt” party (he did!) and optimistically donned my favorite sports coat. It’s a beautifully crafted Harris Tweed coat (my wife found it in a thrift store when we were in college), a background of dark green with warm threads of brown, gold and a host of other greens running through it. It’s been hanging in the closet for months, calling to me. But here in Santa Barbara there hasn’t been a moment in the last eight months when it cooled down enough to consider throwing on even a flannel shirt.

Until the good weather arrives, I’ll be crawling under a rock and hangin’ til the mercury creeps down a skosh.