How To Tell It's Autumn in New England

You would think it would be a pretty easy thing to determine; one simply looks at the calendar to see that autumn begins on September 23rd. Here in New England, though, we've come to understand, after hundreds of years, that the calendar doesn't always know what it's talking about. No, if you want to know when autumn REALLY begins, you have to look for the usual signs like:



.....Football! You bet!...









....School starts...
















and





....the first leaves change colors...


















But then there are the less obvious, but far more telling, signs:





....the cats (all of them, even noisy "Don't Fence Me In" Toeses) insist on coming in at night - and staying in until morning...
















....the children are asking for oatmeal for breakfast and soup in their lunch boxes...

















....Jackets on the way to school (though Daddy holds out with the shorts until damned near the first snowfall)...

















....and the local ice cream joints start closing up shop...

















Yep. It's autumn in New England, no matter WHAT the calendar says.