It took me a year in Iowa for me to realize what real weather was like. The worst Northern California really has to throw at you is a few days of hot summers. Snow will lightly dust our hilltops once in a decade or two. My time in the Midwest was marked by stiflingly muggy summers and my very first blizzard. I had to keep blinking furiously to keep my contact lenses from freezing on my eyeballs. 

Despite an emotional train-wreck midway through (another story) I do miss a few things about Iowa. One is the fireflies dancing about the air during the summer evenings. Another is midwestern autumn, where the trees explode with fiery hues, reds and golds with the occasional spot of green. Here in Santa Rosa, we have some transplants trying their best, but it’s not the same.

Summer stayed past its sell-by date around these parts, blessing us with eighty-degree weather just this past week. Although the seasonal change is nothing like what folks experience elsewhere in the country, with a small temperature drop and early-morning blanket of grey mist, it finally felt like we experienced a seasonal change.