Fall Arrives

According to informed sources, fall arrives today at 5:18 PM EDT. The dance of the stars never ceases to amaze me, how every one knows its place.
I always approach the fall equinox with mixed feelings. Summer is all too short in my neck of the woods, but I do so enjoy the pleasures of a cozy place by the woodstove and the crisp air of September. I love apples, too, and having a teapot full of hot tea on the table.
We had our first frost a couple of nights ago. It was a light one. The squash and cucumber plants in the main garden had their leaves frozen, but the zucchini here in the kitchen garden next to the porch was hardly touched. The basil is bronzed on top, but not gone. I had to take out my tomato plants already. At the end of the summer they started showing signs of late blight. (That is the nasty fungal disease that caused the Irish potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century.) I took them out rather than let the disease develop and spread spores all around my garden. Our kitchen is full of bowls of green and red tomatoes, and fried green tomatoes are a regular menu item at the moment. I understand that this has been a bad year for the blight in some quarters, since it thrives in the weather conditions we had for most of the summer. This is the first time we have had to deal with it.
I found a dead dragonfly by the back door after the frost. I had no idea that these biggest dragonflies were painted with such amazing colors, blue and orange and black. They moved so fast, I thought they were just dark gray. I never saw a big one like this up so close before. He will find his way into the paintings, I am sure.
The photo is of the red maple just to the northeast of the house. It is always the first tree to turn red in the fall, and it is in full color now.