I like you Autumn. I really do. You have such brilliant colours! And you’re sun is warm without burning the skin off me. You have fewer hours of sunshine, but it’s still a good balance. It’s dark in the morning when I’m still sleeping, and it is dark when it’s time to go to bed.

You have a crispness in the air that feels delightful. You motivate me to get me nice sweaters out and my heavier shoes with the good soles. I note that you bring to end all the growth in my garden but really, it needs to get pulled out so I can start again in the spring.

You also remind me that it is time to think about thankfulness. It’s the time of year of harvest. After a good growing season we paused again to sing “Now thank we all our God”….or other songs of thankfulness.

Yes, Autumn is a good time of the year.

But you also remind us that with cooler nights and falling leaves we should be getting busy preparing for the winter season.

Time to put the garden hoses away, clean up the gardens, book that appointment to have the winter tires put on (sooner here perhaps) and time to set away the patio furniture. We won’t be sitting on the deck much now and it due course it will just be where the snow sits.

The shadows are getting longer. That reminds me it is almost October. The month we would have celebrated my Dad’s birthday. 2025 would have made him 95! Yikes….! It is also the month we will remember that he was Promoted to Glory and our recent visit to Mount Pleasant will make that day a bit more bitter sweet. How I miss him. How we miss him.

Autumn also seems to bring a bit of a pick up in the pace of life. I was with the Edmonton CoH executive team recently for a training day. A great group of people – very talented! But as the calendar is picking up I couldn’t help but think I need to change something in my life.

I’m busy – a bit too busy. Wendy says that I need the interaction and she’s not wrong – I love it. But with the Condo bd, the pace of work and travel, my interests in family and all that comes with that calendar I have been thinking about my role in CIVIDA.

The intention was to be a member of the board of trustees. I’m well past that, and the direction all this is going will be to have me more involved. Plus my travel schedule means I am missing board and committee meetings. So when the City of Edmonton wrote to ask if I would renew my two-year commitment as of May 1, 2026 I responded that I would not.

So, as of the end of April 2026, I will step away from that board, and maybe I will feel a bit of space in the calendar.