Flannel, Quilts and Nippy Nights

Summertime is finally fleeting and oddly, though, I am not sad. Yes, the fields will soon be emptied of pastel-colored flowers and buzzing bees and wading knee-deep in tall, wild grass as the sun takes its time in setting, late into the warm-breeze nights that cause one to linger  and gaze up into a sky  transforming from azure to cobalt with stars in infinite millions bringing on a sense of wonder that never ceases to delight. However, Autumn is waiting quietly beyond Summer's bend and now and then you can hear it, see it, feel it as it approaches. Just little touches here and there. But sure enough, it will break free of Summer's green and yellow dreamy hold to announce itself in snippets of orange, red, russet and gold. Yes, the days are still warm and sunny but the darker early mornings  and darker early evenings are tell-tale as to what  Autumn is really up to. So this is the time that I relish most, that in-between moment  when we'll soon have  a new seasonal host that will require of us to put away the shorts, the sandals, the beach towels and lotions that made our Summer a sensuous journey peppered with sunshowers, thunderclouds, swims in the lake, collecting shells on the shoreline and charring vegetables on grills and catching up on novels for requisite lounge chair readings and picking flowers in the garden awash in scents and ladybugs as iced drinks are sipped and savored under umbrellas striped and wide. Yes, this is the time when flannel, quilts and nippy nights become the wardrobe, the bedcoverings, the almost-black frosty evenings that draw us to lighting candles,  tending firesides, brewing up extra coffee or tea or reaching for cups of hot chocolate or perhaps sifting through cookbooks in search of something soothing to bake that'll taste even better while wrapped in a blanket or thick fuzzy robe for requisite armchair readings of long-held books, old letters, old photos or just recalling beautiful memories  of golden Summers past that now bring comfort and peace to our yearning Autumnal souls.