Sometimes I'm a bit slow to catch on. For instance, fall in coastal Mississippi is amazing. It's taken me exactly three years to work this out. By amazing, I mean that the fall wildflowers here on the coast are truly something to see. In fact, the colors do ucky-gushy things to my soul and I find myself wandering through fields, basket over my arm, picking wild flowers, how absolutely cheesy 70's TV-movie-ish. It's truly a bit sickening.
In Texas, where I was born and raised, the bluebonnet is KING of wildflower land and every good central Texan holds their breath all winter hoping that the rain is just right and that spring will bring fields awash with bluebonnets, indian paintbrush, and indian blankets. Every family takes an afternoon to have a bluebonnet photo opt and children across the state are dressed in their Easter best to pose in the fields of blue.
Given this background, it is perhaps possible to understand that I've been thrown and slow to realize that here in the soggy bottom coastal south the fall is when nature turns on the show. Don't get me wrong, spring in Mississippi does mean azealas and daylilies and other softer shows. It's attractive. Yet, for purely wild beauty that takes my breath away and sadly does make my heart want to sing, give me the sunflowers, gerardia, purple aster, ageratum, and goldenrod that spring out of the edge of the forest, line the roadways, and cover the fields at this time of year.
Here on the gulf coast, the suddenness of fall always takes me by surprise. You begin to sense that slight change in the air that tells you that even though it's still muggy and hot, Fall is around the corner.
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