People often say, “Fall is my favourite time of the year.” Well, they probably mean it, but I always think that line is merely sad acceptance that summer has flown the coop and we may as well resign ourselves to the impending chill of fall and then winter.
Have you ever noticed that the first four or five “frost warnings” can be ignored? At least in the city. But, after that, watch out or your carefully nurtured tomatoes and sprawling zucchini will be frozen mush after a particularly bone-chilling night.
Autumn whimsy:
• Fall is the season when your search for the rake turns up the garden hoe you couldn’t find in the spring.
• The Law of Fall: More leaves blow into your yard than blow out.
• A farmer was boasting to a friend about his fabulous corn crop. The friend asked how many bushels the farmer harvested.
The farmer said: “Well, I had a pretty good yield. I don’t know the exact number of bushels, but I stacked all I could outdoors and put the rest in the barn.”
• Have you heard about the Autumn Leaves Cocktail? Very potent stuff. You drink two of them, change colour and fall to the ground!
Fall Poetry Corner, submitted by Elmer Equinox:
I like spring, but it’s too young,
Summers fine, but it’s too proud,
Best of all is autumn.
Its leaves are a little yellower,
Its tone mellower, Its colours richer.
Autumn is tinged a little with sorrow,
Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring,
Nor of the power of summer,
But of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age.
Autumn knows its limitations and is content.
School is forging on now. Teachers are back in the saddle. Students are cracking those books. And these jokes are filtering out of the hallway locker:
• Teacher: “What was John A. Macdonald noted for?”
Student: “His memory.”
Teacher: “What makes you think his memory was so great?”
Student: “Because they erected a monument to his memory!”
• A class of second graders was asked by their teacher what they wanted to be when they grow up. The kids had the usual answers, such as doctor, lawyer, rock star, fireman, astronaut, NHL star, etc. One little boy, however, had no answer, so the teacher pressed him further about what he wanted to be.
Finally, he shrugged and said: “Well, gee, this is no fair. I don't even know what I want to be for Hallowe’en yet!”
• Fall reminder: The family that rakes together aches together.
• It was an exhausted leaf-raker who said, “Why did Isaac Newton make a law where everything has to fall down?”
Elmer Equinox just e-mailed another “fabulous fall” poem:
The smell of autumn in the air,
The golden glowing sunset there,
The heaps of scarlet apples here,
The football scores that fill the ear,
There's just one small thing that peeves —
Leaves!
Football follies:
• A football referee tosses the coin and says to the captain: “Okay, you won the toss, so you have your choice. You can receive or you can face the TV cameras.”
• It was a gridiron fan who said, “I’ve watched so much football that I’ve worn out my end zone.”
• It was an infrequent Gridiron observer who said, “Nowadays when a football player is called a ‘triple-threat,’ you don’t know if it means he’s going to hold out for more money, go on strike or demand to be traded.”
• Please tell me why it always takes half an hour to play the last two minutes of a football game?