Hmmm. That's a tough one. I guess it would be fall. I love the tapestry of color on the wooded hills around here. The dust kicked up from the harvests gives us some of the most violently beautiful sunsets and sunrises ever imagined. There is nothing quite like that DEEP blue of a clear fall sky. The mornings when all the ponds, lakes, streams and pools are steaming up through the leaves littering their surface, the crystallized landscapes when there is a heavy frost...the sad singing of the crickets, and the mournful hooting of the owls...what could compare to that?

Unlesss... Hmmm, no I would have to say winter. Definitely winter. The brisk slap of wind that wakes you up when you walk outside, the crunch of fresh fallen snow...the way streetlights turn snow into falling diamond dust at night are all incomparable. And then there are those long winter nights huddled under blankets and cuddling by a fire with family and pets while the wind howls around the house (usually with a handy stack of dog eared plant and seed catalogs and a notebook and pen handy). The mugs of hot chocolate and tea we go through during the winter are just amazing. Hmmm...

But then, I guess really I prefer spring. The first birdsong that harmonizes so well with the trickling of water, melting snow, rain, dew, morning mists of pure silver that turn to dazzling gold when the sun rises that first really warm day when you take off your shoes and run barefoot through the nearest patch of green...how could you compete with that? Not to mention that exhilirating first inhalation of the smell of EARTH! After frozen noses all winter, to smell dirt is intoxicating. The dirt under my fingernails from my spring scrabbling in the soil doesn't usually wash off till mid-summer...ohhhh...

Summer, now THERE's a season! Just lying in the warm grass soaking up the hot sun as if I were solar powered and listening to a concerto by the cicadas...what better way to spend a summers evening. And those evenings are so long! You can always get in an extra glass of iced tea and watch the dancing lights of the fireflies come slowly on as the sky gets deeper and deeper indigo blue. The thunderstorms that break up those dry hot days are some of my favorite moments as all the trees in the woods bow to the power of the wind like courtiers bowing as a king or queen passes. The clouds pile up and tower in the sky like they will fall right on you, and then the rain comes down in sheets, rivers, bullets...and the thunder and lightening blind and deafen you to everything. There is nothing so heart poundingly beautiful as a summer storm, and the aftermath, when the rumbles get fainter and fainter, and start to mix with beams of sunlight that illuminate the still falling rain, and the birdsong that starts hesitantly afterwards and then escalates into a full scale celebration. The smell after those summer storms is a heady mix of ozone and whatever flowers the violence has crushed. Jasmine, honeysuckle, rose, mint, tomatoes...the smell is better than any designer fragrance ever conceived. That is when the kids go out and play in the running gutters and the pools of water and build dams and ships of fallen flowers and leaves and twigs, and neighbors come out and chat about how that was definitely the scariest/noisiest/prettiest thunderstorm all season. No...I guess summer would be it. Summer is definitely my season.

And that Brings Us Back To Fall