Winterizing

A long time ago, at the very beginning of my career, I produced an educational filmstrip (that'll date me!) called Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons for a now-defunct division of The Walt Disney Company called Walt Disney Educational Media Company. In it, we talked about four distinct seasons and the noticeable changes from one season to the next. We showed Pooh Bear's excitement as bare trees blossomed in the spring, bore fruit in the summer, lost leaves in the fall, and were bare and sparse in the winter. I remember lamenting that the seasons were nowhere near as noticeable for me in Southern California as we depicted them in the filmstrip, wondering if perhaps we'd been a bit too dramatic.

At that point, I'd never lived outside Califonia and never experienced the sort of seasonal transition that we touted in the production -- a transition that I notice every year, now that we live in the Pacific Northwest!

This weekend, Fall was in the air. It was crips and cold, but sunny. The colors in the trees were almost beyond description, with deep reds and oranges and vibrant yellows. Finally this weekend I was forced to come to terms with the fact that it was time to winterize -- something we never did in California!

This...
became this:This...became this:And as my back cramped up, this...

(That's Elisabeth arriving home to spend the day with us. Aleks also came home for some peace and quiet away from the fraternity yesterday!)

became this:and this...(That's the shed in the background. Tom's still building it; his goal is to finish it in time for it to be a Santa's workshop.)

became this:Winnie the Pooh was right to get excited about the changing seasons and even though I'm not quite as dramatic in expressing my own excitement, I must admit that there's a palpable thrill in the air as the seasons change around here!