10 Things to Notice as Summer Turns to Fall
This morning, I’m sitting on the back deck beneath the pergola, listening to rain tap and splash against the roof overhead.
It’s still summer.
Technically.
But something has changed.
Maybe it’s the rain. Maybe it’s the cooler air slipping around the edges of the morning. Maybe it’s simply September, arriving with its sharpened pencils and fresh notebooks and ancient promise that we might begin again.
Whatever it is, I can feel the season beginning to turn.
Not dramatically. Not yet.
The trees haven’t burst into color. There are no piles of leaves to shuffle through. Summer hasn’t packed its bags and gone home.
This is the quieter part.
The in-between.
And I think it might be my favorite part to notice.
Because seasons rarely change all at once. They change in increments. A shadow falls somewhere it didn’t fall last week. The sun disappears a few minutes earlier. We reach for a sweater without thinking about it.
The world whispers before it announces.
Here are ten things to notice while summer is becoming fall.
1. The light
Before the leaves change, the light does.
Watch where it falls in your house in the morning. Notice the long shadows beginning to stretch across the sidewalk in late afternoon. Look at the color of the sky around dinner time.
Is there a particular patch of light you could photograph every few days?
You might be surprised by how quickly it moves.
2. The first thing you reach for because you’re chilly
A cardigan.
Socks.
The throw that has spent the summer folded over the back of the sofa.
Maybe you close a window that has been open since June.
Notice the moment your body recognizes the new season before your mind does.
3. What is disappearing
This is one of my favorite noticing practices: pay attention to what is quietly leaving.
Berries.
Bare feet.
Dinner outside.
The sound of sprinklers.
Light lingering until bedtime.
We are usually very good at noticing arrivals. But departures deserve our attention, too.
What will you miss?
4. What is arriving
Then look in the other direction.
Pears at the market. Mornings that require sleeves. The first turning leaf. A different bird at the feeder. A sudden desire to make soup.
What has appeared in your ordinary life that wasn’t there two weeks ago?
5. The sound of morning
Open a window or step outside before the day gets going.
Listen.
Are there still summer insects buzzing? Are the birds different? Is there rain drumming on the roof? Wind moving through leaves that have begun to dry?
Every season has a soundtrack.
See if you can hear this one arriving.
6. The tree that knows first
There is always one.
One branch going gold while everything around it remains green. One maple showing off. One tree dropping leaves onto a still-summery sidewalk.
Find yours.
Then keep visiting it.
7. The changing colors of ordinary things
Not just trees.
Look at the produce stand. The flower buckets outside the market. Gardens in your neighborhood. The clothes appearing in shop windows. The weeds along the roadside.
Notice the palette changing around you.
Better yet, collect it.
Photograph five colors that belong to this particular moment between summer and fall.
8. What you suddenly want to make
Seasonal change often stirs something in us, too.
Maybe you want to bake bread.
Pull out your watercolors.
Start a new notebook.
Knit something. Write something. Rearrange the studio. Gather leaves. Make a collage.
Don’t worry about whether it makes sense.
Just notice the impulse.
What does this season make your hands want to do?
9. Something from summer you want to keep
Before we rush into the next season, choose something from this one.
A photograph.
A ticket stub.
A shell.
A flower pressed between book pages.
A sentence written down after dinner outside.
A scrap of paper from a place you went.
A tiny ordinary artifact that says:
This happened. I was here.
Keep it.
This is how an ordinary life becomes an archive.
10. The moment you know
At some point, there will be a moment.
You’ll step outside one morning and smell it.
Or hear leaves scraping across pavement.
Or notice the peculiar blue of an autumn sky.
Or wrap both hands around something warm.
And you’ll think:
Oh.
There you are.
Fall.
When that moment comes, don’t hurry past it.
Notice.
The beautiful thing about paying attention is that we don’t have to wait for anything extraordinary to happen.
The material is already here.
A rainy morning. A changing tree. The last peach. A cardigan pulled from the closet. Light moving across the kitchen floor.
An ordinary life, changing almost imperceptibly from one season into another.
And us, here to witness it.
Want to spend the season noticing with me?
This autumn, I’m inviting you into An Autumn of Art & Noticing—three month-long creative experiences in paying attention, collecting what matters, and making an artful record of the ordinary life you’re living.
We begin September 8 with Be Ready, a month devoted to becoming more awake to what is already happening around you.
October brings The Art of Collecting.
November, The Encyclopedia of Ordinary Days.
Come for one month or stay for the whole season.
Registration for September closes September 7.
