Seasonal Changes

I can tell that fall is here - and even if it isn't here chronologically, the transition's in the air, reflected by the fact that:

• - It's time to deflate the kiddie pool, although we're not ready for the flannel sheets
  
• - Geese are in the air and overnighting in the wheat stubble behind the house, though hummingbirds are still at our feeders
• - School has started (along with the first school-bourne virus - after just four days of classes!), though neither the MEAPs nor the first field trips are here yet
• - Ragweed is pollinating, and I wouldn't mind losing the rest of my basil if the first killing frost just gets rid of the ragweed

That night was the turning-point in the season. We had gone to bed in summer, and we awoke in autumn; for summer passes into autumn in some imaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.
~ Henry David Thoreau, from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), p. 356.