“The Fall of the Leaf”: Autumn Rituals in Florida

Living in Southwest Florida, I have to admit that I miss the crisp air and autumn leaves that I knew growing up—that lovely end to the summer heat (hot, hot, hot this year for all of us) with an awareness that life was shifting into a new rhythm of quiet contemplation. Nature exploding in one last burst of color before what poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, called, “the fall of the leaf.” There’s something deep and lovely about the change of the seasons.

Alas, Florida seems unchanged from midsummer. 

The last colorful event occurs when poinciana trees pop with orangish-red booms in early June. After that, we’re evergreen as the days unfold with sultry temperatures and breathless humidity, while we hold our breaths to get through the last part of hurricane season.

Having lived here a number of years, though, I’ve learned to create my own version of autumn by reinventing it inside my house. 

Firstly, I do a closet re-sort. This one may seem a bit odd since I don’t haul heavy coats and boots from hibernation. Instead, I pull out similar clothes, just in different colors. Deep coral, tomato red, and . . . black. You can’t have too much black. Secondly, I have a poetry revival. Wading into big stories with complicated characters always seems fitting for the dog days of July and August. But when fall arrives, I want my “poetry fix,” especially written by my beloved nineteenth-century poets who always weave a little thread of melancholy through their autumnal poems. Thirdly, I put up decorations with a little edge to them: my Jack Skellington tree (I admit, it stays up through Christmas), “lover’s eye” pillow, and ceramic Poe typewriter. They all seem to assuage my need for the “fall of the leaf.”

Sort of.

And while we don’t have the vivid colors of autumn leaves in Florida, we do possess the most brilliant sunsets this time of year when the sky is painted with streaks of red and gold, glowing long after the sun dips below the horizon. I can watch them every evening from my lanai and still feel that sense of reflection that comes with fall . . .