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Smells Like Autumn
I have often informed my autumnally-arrogant friends that the changing of the seasons in Southern California is not theoretical so much as it is subtle. Maybe only someone conditioned throughout a lifetime to this equable desert clime, notices the minuscule transformation that occurs when the axis shifts and the sun changes its angle. Today, I took my daily constitutional through Eagle Rock, the particularly verdant neighborhood where I live, and noticed the first signs of autumn in Los Angeles.
During the past couple of weeks, the mornings have been blessedly overcast. The relentless glare has not broken through the haze until well past noon. This cooling trend will not preclude the usual October heat wave, I fear, but I enjoy it just the same.
I took off through the gray morning, following my usual route up my street, across busy Colorado Boulevard and then up to Hill, where I turn to follow the street West for almost a mile. Hill Street is populated with houses built mostly during the earlier half of the last century. It is an enclave of California Spanish mansions and preserved Craftsman-style beauties. On this comely street where I have walked throughout the summer, I encounter more people on foot than in cars. Yet my walks remain peaceful and my time spent up here feels somewhat solitary.
The canopy is still green this early in September. Admittedly, there are few trees in Los Angeles that turn dramatically like the maples of the East. Here the foliage may change to brown during the fall, but it is more likely that the trees will just don a new wardrobe of jade as the cycle continues without much obvious variation.
Yet, September is the historical beginning of the harvest. Here in the city, without fields of wheat or dried stalks of corn crunching under tractor treads, I look for small clues to point to the bounty. It is the wilder of Hill Street's inhabitants who tip me off to the spoils of nature.
Jays sit atop the crowns of giant, browning sunflowers, screeching and picking at their gray and white repast. Sparrows gobble the last green grasshoppers from the stalks of late summer tomatoes in overgrown vegetable patches. Finches bicker in the ivory-blooming, sky-high yuccas.
But, it is the squirrels that demand my attention this morning. They are everywhere, bantering with me from the branches I stroll beneath. They perch in the peppers, cry out from the carobs. Each scurries to gather kernels from scrub oaks, jacarandas, pines, walnuts and date palms. The half-chewed remains of the pods they've clutched in tiny paws — long and squat, brown and gnarled, smooth and spiny — crunch underfoot.
Throughout the treetops, these bushy-tailed rodents reveal the city's autumnal secret: it is the seeds that truly mark the urban harvest. Now I notice the darkening pods on the ubiquitous, lavender agapanthus. Hedges marking property lines are ablaze with tantalizing crimson berries. Passion vines litter the ground with rotting orange fruit. And the cosmos, marigolds and zinnias are heavy with the germ of next spring's gardens.
As I retrace my steps up Mt. Royal Street, I spy a neighbor's pomegranate, full with reddening produce. A blue bird has begun to peck at one, which has split to reveal glistening, red pellets. The gray squirrel in an evergreen almost pelts me with the remains of a half-eaten pinecone. Soft, greenish figs lay on the ground beneath a tree hanging heavily over a fence. Around the corner, an olive, laden with ripe orbs, blushes in the sun that has begun to peek weakly through the haze.
I stop in my yard and notice signs of new growth as well. The citrus trees are weighted with small, hard, green globes. During the winter they will fatten, emerge into warmer hues and find their way in shopping bags to office break rooms all over the city. I have almost never had to purchase a lemon during
more than 30 years of living here.
As I scrutinize the yard for a few, last moments, I smell the lingering remains of the morning's coolness. This is autumn in Los Angeles.
September 10, 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2004
OWLCAT ARCHIVE -CURRENT-2-3-4-5-6-7 8-9-10-11-12 | |
 Recently, I went to the Farmer's
Market in Los Angeles. It was my first trip there in years. I had forgotten what a sleepy place it is to pass an afternoon. Strolling past the displays of dried fruit platters, at one of the market's food vendors, I became nostalgic for the world of my childhood where these were given and received, with regularity, each Xmas — like fruitcakes.
I loved those tiny plastic forks and the figs dressed up like flowers. I'm not really sure why Californians would want dried citrus or dates, when yummy fresh hung on trees right outside the door. Yet we did enjoy them. Come to think of it, I don't see those Hickory Farms cheese baskets anymore either. All I've seen lately are the mini-muffin baskets, or collections of popcorn in designer tins.
While they may taste fine there is just nothing seasonal about glorified Cracker Jacks. I suppose it is only that I pine for the old gestures, which made no more sense than the new, but still feel like regrettably lost traditions.
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