I don’t know what the temperatures have been like where you are, but around here (west central Texas), It’s been hot. You know it’s been hot when the highs are in the low to mid nineties and it feels cool. Most of the last month has seen temperatures aourn one hundred four to one hundred six, with some days hitting one ten or more.

What has that to do with autumn?

I’m living in the house my parents lived in until a few years ago when they moved to a nearby town. They had a ramp put in when my mother had knee replacement surgery. It comes off at an angle and passes under a post oak. The oak has been dropping leaves for the last few weeks, and they’ve been falling on the ramp. Which I walk up when I get home in the afternoon.

The leaves don’t look anything like what you see in the picture above. Post oak leaves turn brown. They might have a tinge of red to them, but not much if they do at all. Post oaks are not trees that anyone travels to see when their leaves turn.

But just walking up the ramp with all the leaves under foot feels like fall. I didn’t grow up where there are a lot of brilliannt fall colors. I grew up mostly around here, and this is what fall tends to look like. The mestquite leaves will turn yellow, but, mesquite is another tree people don’t  travel to see change color.

Add to the changing colors a dip in the tempertaure, even to a temperature that still requires air conditioning running most of the day, and it feels a little more like fall.

Fall is my favorite time of year simply because it (usually) isn’t  so hot.

For reasons that have been lost in the mists of time, I have always associated Ray Bradbury witih autumn and with Halloween. It probably has something to do with reading him at that time of year as well as autumn and, to a lesser extent, Halloween being central topics in much of what he wrote.

I’m ready for the weather to start turning cooler. The highs next week are supposed to be in the mid eighties. I’ll believe it when I feel it. It got close to one hundred degrees today, and I don’t think it was supposed to have gotten that hot. It is also supposed to rain.

Again, I’ll believe it when I feel it.

Although rain would certainly be nice. My lawn crunches when I walk on it. And we might get a littell fall color on the few trees that have leaves that run color around here. but only if they get enough rain.

But I digress.

I’m in the mood to read and review some Bradbury. I’m not sure just what yet. I’ve posted about The October Country and Something Wicked This Way Comes. I don’t think I could add anything of substance to those posts.

I’ll probably pick a few short stories. Not sure which ones yet. And I’ll probabaly look at some other autumn themed or related stories.

Any suggestions?