Welcome to Autumn
The real one. Here in New Mexico the seasons usually arrive on or about the first of the month they’re supposed to start: December, March, June, and of course, September. Despite what the bureaucrats say, the feel of the air, the nature of the light, the mellowing temperatures tell the tale. And I’m not the only person who thinks this way; Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy does too.
Usually I can smell and feel the approach of autumn by about the middle of August. This year, after again having a cool start to summer, we got a late-season heat spurt that kind of hung on. There wasn’t a lot of autumn advance notice.
But today when Emma and I went for our walk it was clearly beginning to be autumn in Albuquerque’s North Valley. My favorite time of year.
We walked the ditch that runs up through Tinnin. It’s a beautiful walk year-round. The yards are mostly a combination of immaculate lawn and well-designed and maintained xeriscaping (that latter’s usually the sticking point.) The houses are mostly gorgeous and well-constructed, as I learned when I got to walk through some of them during construction years ago, courtesy of my friend Chip, who was in the business.
I’d love to see what they look like inside now that people actually live in them. Of course I’m not about to go ring the bell and ask for a look around. People tend to be wary of that sort of thing - and for once, they should be; it’d be a swell way for the ill-intentioned to case prospective burglary targets. It has occurred to me to try doing articles on Albuquerque’s Gracious Houses for magazine sale, local or even national. Maybe someday.
We started out walking from the entrance to the development along a lateral ditch. As we passed a big house south across the ditch I called out greeting to the creatures in the huge yard, as I usually do: “Hi, dog! Hello, llamas! Hi, sheep. Hi, uh - whatever you are.”
The big white Great Pyrenees- looking dog looked at me plaintively from the fence as if to say, “See what I have to contend with, kind stranger? I’m in charge of security here, and I don’t even know what half these things are!”
Actually, the main mystery creature, which I first took to be a pig, turned out to be a large ram. The slanting early-sunset light made it hard to tell at first.
The swallows were out in force. We walked north past the development and up to a house with a large duck pond beside it. I saw a man walking from the house toward the pond. He noticed us and said hi. I answered in kind.
I wanted to tell him how beautiful I found the pond and how much I admired it. I did not. I don’t know why I get struck shy like that. I intend to break that habit.
Emma fell in the ditch. Again. The problem was the sides of the ditch are steep there. This time it didn’t precipitate a huge crisis; she didn’t go in over her head, which causes her to fly into tiny fragments. It did upset her, though. I suggested she go ahead and get a drink since she was in there anyway, but she wanted out.
Then, although she scouted a couple of other places to go for a drink, she refused to try. Even when I found a nice sort of ramp in the ditchbank. She’d go until her nose almost touched the water, then stop. I told her to cowgirl up and just go in the damned water. She wouldn’t.
I was tempted to just sort of nudge her. But that would traumatize her for life, so that she’d require extensive therapy. And I just don’t see myself shelling out the price my pal Melinda just paid for her new Beamer SUV to a dog shrink, much less spending my golden afternoons lounging in waiting rooms (which I hate), and sitting in on sessions:
The Kindly Herr Professor Doktor Greulich: So. Tell me about your mother, Fräulein Emma Hündchen.
Emma: She was a real bitch.
TKPDG: How long haff you harbored zese feelings of hostility toward your mother?
Emma: Hostility? I loved her. She was my Mom!
***
So she held out all the way home. Then she went and drank all the cats’ water, just to show me what was what.