Nature's Signs

I have always - well okay sometimes - been attuned to the signals that Nature sends us. As in this morning. As I was just walking Kooper (Lady is still asleep). You can smell the Fall around as the drizzled-on brown leaves on the ground give off their mustiness for the first time. It rained overnight. That, and the fine mist falling now, are the first real rains we've had in a couple of weeks it seems. The wind has shifted, too. It's out of the south now. I don't need to see the leaves rustling or the flags fluttering or the grass tilting in the wind to tell.

Nature's signs once more whisper to me . . . indicating the direction of her breezes: the jets from Ronald Reagan National Airport are taking off toward the south this morning . . . into the wind.