Is it Spring or Fall?

Cool nights…
Warn days…
Planting tomatoes, lettuce, spring flowers…
Getting the furnace checked out for the coming winter…
Grass is greening up and has dew on it in the mornings…
Butterflies and birds are everywhere…
People are starting to come out of their houses and are active during the day…

Having lived in “traditional climates” (Midwest, California, etc)and now having lived in the desert for a year, late October is when it is heard to know if it is spring or fall. All of the above are currently going on around us here in the desert. The nurseries are full of vegetables and what I think of as spring flowers but here they are planted in the fall. The summer is a memory with it’s 100+ days and now the weather becomes the ideal climate and what brings the snowbirds to the desert in droves. The butterflies and birds that are everywhere are those that have migrated from their summer residence up north to the sourth for the winter. Some will stay here all winter and others are just stopping on their way further south. So….if fall is spring then what is spring?