One of the things I find peculiar about living down on the Monterey Peninsula is the warm early fall. In Sitka we often had more than thirty inches of rain in October. Here, September and October are almost indistinguishable from summer. Days are warm enough to leave the doors open to cool off the inside of the house.

The weather this week was clear and sunny. Arthur came over and we played outside putting on the putting green, knocking balls around end to end and sometimes simply picking the balls up in his hand and plunking them into the hole. Arthur has developed an interesting wrinkle in his golf game, where he hits the ball around for a few minutes and then he will put his putter down and stand on his head on the green. Then he stretches out in a downward facing dog and looks at his grandparents between his legs. Then he gets up and attempts to hop over his putter backwards and forwards. I’m not sure how these manuver’s are scored but he is devoted to them: putting, head standing, the upside down peek-a-boo and hopping.

I would like to see these techniques added to the PGA roster. I’m sure it would make the sport more enjoyable to watch.

After more than a month of sunny afternoons with some drippy fog in the morning today we woke up to actual rain. Not a Sitka rain but a real puddle making, droplets on tree branches, verifiable water kind of rain. The first thing that strikes me down here is the interesting fragrance that comes along with a periodic rain fall. Something in the dust activates a rich smell. Cottonwood, and live oak trees bloom with a dusty sharp smell. The old hay fields surrounding our community have gone to thistle’s now, and even they have a fresh acid flower smell.

We lived on the ocean in Sitka. The tide flats were almost always fragrent with eel grass and clam squirt. But when the hard rains came in the fall just the huge bulk of water seemed to smother the fragrances of spruce trees covered in pitch. In Carmel wet grass still smells like grass. In the rainforest wet grass smells like water.

Dot and I coming back from our morning walk.

Dot and I enjoyed our morning walk a great deal today, though it was slow because Dot had to stop every to or three feet to smell the ground. All the news left by the dogs of the neighborhood seemed to be rising up like ghosts every inch of the way.

Because of the rain tody we plan to go to our in-laws house to play board games. Even though it’s hardly wet at all by Sitka standards, it is perfectly suited for a game day with fresh cookies and perhaps a baseball game on the TV. Today is their fall the kids are back in school and farms in the valley are stockpiling truck loads of pumpkins for Halloween. Even though it may be seventy degrees and sunny next week, we can enjoy the first cosy weekend of the year.

Corn stalks dried and stacked

pumpkins piled in painted bins.

“Seasons change,” you say.

Here is a moving poem… that is it’s about moving…I wrote it for my friend Yi Fu Twan.