SUMMERFALL

Libby K. Hanaway
Oct 24
8 min read

Updated: Oct 31

Howdy everyone 🤠! Greeting you from Texas, as we visit our E and experience the usual vagueness of a Lone Star October. It’s fall according to the calendar, but summer according to my shorts. And if it’s summer in my closet, it’s still summer in my heart.

While I'm all-in on summer, I’m also a full-fledged fan of fall: give me all the sharpened pencils, the bus stop kids, the crispy leaves confetti-ing the sidewalks, the blazing yellows, oranges, and reds against a brilliant blue sky. And cheers to the glowing evening lights, the apples everywhere, the Trick-or-Treaters at the door, the brown and orange comfort foods at Trader Joe’s. Fall is both INVIGORATING and SNUG, and — importantly — it serves as the long red carpet for Thanksgiving, my #1 holiday of the year.

So yes, YES to the whole fall season, but for me it’s usually a slow transition. I tend to hold tightly to whatever season or holiday I'm currently enjoying, incapable of an early embrace of whatever comes next. Thus, I am genuinely spooked by the front yard zombies lurching out in late September. And the pink Valentine candy overtaking the red and green M&Ms on 12/26 clearance. And the neon foam pool noodles stacked high in the muddiness of March. Retailers and lifestyle influencers have a stake in early seasonal shifts, but I am just too slow on the up-take. My most consistent internal response is: “Wait, what?”

I am just this minute remembering a Henry David Thoreau quote tacked to my bulletin board when I was a young, earnest twenty-something:

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit [and resign yourself to the influence of the earth."]

I Googled this quote seconds ago to get the words right, and I am certain my bulletin board version — I remember it was blue, probably cut from a greeting card — ended with simply tasting the fruit. To modern ears, the word 'resign' sounds passively un-inspirational, and the greeting card maker must have opted for the shorter, more marketable, less resigned version. I understand and agree with your full original expression, Henry David. But sorry, I'd have probably lopped that part off, too.

Anyway, transitions in general are not a personal strength, so I try to adapt in various ways. To accommodate my lagging transition from summer to fall, I am adopting — and now sharing — my new, just-invented (I think?) word that gently, if too literally, bridges this sometimes-suspended seasonal space: Summerfall. Summerfall may sound like a new upscale housing development, but for me (and maybe for you: have at it!), it defines that amorphous stretch when nature in September/October says one thing and the calendar says another. During Summerfall, summer is indeed falling and will soon give way entirely to fall, but it will not be hurried or rushed along. This benign pause brings to mind walks with our sweet old dog Goldie, who in her later, slower years would stop and lie down on the sidewalk many blocks from home, as if to say, "Yep, I'm good. I'm just gonna settle down here for a while."

(I suppose we once had a term for a related seasonal phenomenon — Indian Summer — but language is nothing if not dynamic and evolving. Also, if you live in FL, AZ, SoCal, etc. — ever-balmy locales where seasons are more conceptual than actual — you may have an entire lexicon of invented seasonal language. If so, let me know!)

In Northern Colorado, 2025 has produced a dreamily extended Summerfall season. In everyday ways, this means still sliding on sandals, keeping windows wide open, and sitting outside in the thinning rays of backyard sunshine for breakfast, lunch, and midday phone conversations. The winter weather car bin stood ready for an early-season storm but was never called to duty. On the other hand, the regular bike rodeo around our cul-de-sac still circles with gusto, though the kids cycle earlier and earlier in the evening with the shrinking daylight hours.

Summerfall surrounds us this year, but for me, its glorious perseverance is best experienced out in the back yard. Gardeners are advised by experts to plant for multi-season interest, but as someone who would rather wait to say hello than give an early goodbye, I’ve always been partial to the patient late-bloomers: the prairie grasses, the sages, the hummingbird mint, the coneflowers, and black-eyed Susans. August-September is usually their swan song moment, but without a punishing frost, they can keep the show going through October, which is where I found myself packing up last week for our trip to Texas.

When I stepped outside late last Thursday afternoon, the sun was shining low and the plants were giving their big finale. A few had already tuckered out: fading, shrinking, and edged with brown, bowing out to make way for the last of the showboats.

Meanwhile, the bees and one regal Painted Lady butterfly were having an end-of-season backyard feast, zipping around for a few final slurps of nectar.

I wanted to sit still out there in the late afternoon quiet, but I knew that this year's Summerfall was now fading fast. Colorado’s online weather guy, Kody — as irreverent as he is accurate — warned that the first freeze would likely creep in during our time away. When Kody speaks, I listen; and so as the sun started sinking, with the packing unfinished and a very early flight the next morning, I raced to both start and finish my yearly end-of-season hustle, dumping still-blooming annuals into the compost bin, saving leftover potting soil for the spring, then quick-cleaning the heavy glazed pots before gathering them to wait out the winter in our garage.

Every year, the dumping-out feels like a bit of a betrayal, so I saluted these friends for their bright, faithful service this year, picturing their next era as fortifying compost for the 2026 beauties. Humming along in my head, I imagined this scene as the gardening version of the banana-baby’s “Circle of Life” moment from last week’s post, which helped with the abrupt farewell.

When we return home later this week, the back patio will seem very gray/beige-sedate with the once-overflowing pots now empty in the garage. Kody's predicted freeze apparently did swoop in, and so we will see if anything is still green and edible and petaled and blooming. I'll keep an eye out for my bee buddies, too — will report on any sightings next week!

The weather apps show sunshine and high-60s at home for the week ahead, so maybe Summerfall has some final juice to keep this late party going. But when it does finally, fully fade out, I think I'll be ready with a belated but sincere hello (or howdy) to Fall. We’ll flick on the gas fireplace, opening our books on the couch and dumping the puzzle pieces on the table. We’ll find the fleece in the hall closet and rake the small leaf piles from our toddler-aged trees. We’ll load the Trader Joe’s cart with our favorite Fall picks and queue up soup season. And I think it will all be very good 🍂.

EXTRA GOOD

ALSO LINKED THROUGH THE EXTRA GOOD PAGE HERE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2025

1._GOOD SPORTS: Well, the Seattle Mariners lost Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to the Toronto Blue Jays in a heartbreaker Monday night; we connected with a few Seattle friends the next day and can report that their hearts are indeed broken. I don't believe in papering over heartache, but I have found that a solid diversion can be helpful for those needing to climb out of the abyss. And so I give you Southpaw — The Life & Legacy of Jim Abbott.

This ESPN E60 documentary premiered in July following the televised 2025 MLB draft; Rick and E started watching it after the draft on that Saturday afternoon, and as I was passing through the family room, it caught my attention, too. I sat down for just a moment ... a moment that lasted for the remainder of the 90-minute film. This documentary tells the story of Flint, Michigan's Jim Abbott, born in 1967 without a right hand. His much-heralded baseball moment came in 1993, when, as a New York Yankee, he pitched a late-season no-hitter against Cleveland. But well before and beyond this clutch sports-history moment, Abbott became a symbol of perseverance and possibility for children with limb limitations and disabilities everywhere.

I may not be the most dedicated professional athletics fan, but I will always pump up any overcoming-the-odds sports story. Jim Abbott's career made me both tear up and cheer. You can watch Southpaw — The Life & Legacy of Jim Abbott (not to be confused with the Jake Gyllenhaal boxing movie, also called Southpaw 😅) with a subscription on ESPN, Disney+ and/or Fubo. Many well-known sports podcasts also featured Abbott's story this year, and you can probably find his autobiography, co-written with Tim Brown, at your local library. His book has a *perfect* title: Imperfect: An Improbable Life (Ballantine Books, 2012).

2._GOOD WORDS: Or in this case, one good word. Merriam-Webster has been running a clever series called Word Icons: Legendary Icons and the Words That Define Them. The icons range from famous sports figures and musicians to Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch, each taking a minute or so on video to define a closely-associated word. The clip I spotted featured Bryan Cranston, who played Walter White in Breaking Bad. If you've read any additional pages on this site, you might know that Breaking Bad is my call-out example of bleak content that, despite critical acclaim, would not make the cut for Extra Good recommendations. Breaking Bad was packed with dark-side, moral-decline material, but Cranston's word for Walter White was — at first surprisingly — "pollyannaish," and I enjoyed his take on it:

(POLLYANNA DISCLAIMER: Though I'm enthusiastically looking out for good on Here's One Good Thing, I'm too much of a partly-sunny/partly-cloudy-sky realist and occasional cynic to be a perpetually-positive Pollyanna. Still, I should probably read Eleanor H. Porter's 1913 novel Pollyanna before I pass judgment. So TBD!)

Also, as a related actor-world FYI, Bryan Cranston's daughter, Taylor Deardon, plays sensitive, non-explicitly neurodivergent Dr. Melissa "Mel" King on the hospital emergency department TV drama The Pitt.

A still image from the TV show The Pitt featuring the character of Dr. Melissa King. She wears a purple shirt with a casual black zip-up jacket on top. She wears glasses and her dark blonde hair is pulled back tightly into a long braid.

With all the nonstop, close-your-eyes (definitely close-MY-eyes) content you might expect in an emergency department setting, The Pitt is sidelined to our Good, But ... warning label category, but Taylor Deardon's portrayal of Dr. Melissa "Mel" King is one of the best reasons to recommend the show. Both Deardon and her Mel are wonderful!

3._GOOD PEOPLE: I know we have gone a little overboard on sports stories this week and last, but stick around for one more athletic-world entry. Have you ever heard of Sister Jean, the iconic, small-stature/big-spirited chaplain for the Loyola University Chicago Men's Basketball team for the past 30 years? She stepped down from her role in August, and passed away on 10/09/25 ... at age 106. Such a full, full well-lived life — her legacy spreads far and wide!

If you've ever watched men's college basketball March Madness, you've probably seen a glowing profile of Sister Jean. She became a bona fide sports celebrity (complete with a best-selling bobblehead) during the Ramblers' NCAA Final Four appearance in 2018 and again in their run-up in 2021. As a Catholic nun immersed in the field of education, her vocational shift to the basketball court in 1994 seemed both improbable and pre-ordained. She knew, cared for, and loved her players season after season— and she knew her hoops stats, too. I read that some of her pre-game prayers included scouting reports. Ha!

Sporting her trademark Loyola--maroon-and-gold Nikes— one heel embroidered with the word "Sister" and the other with "Jean" — Sister Jean lived the joy of the sport and then happily spread the joy of the sport. The Loyola University website overflows with stories, essays, and tributes; the photographs alone radiate her signature spirit. Read all about Sister Jean on the Loyola University website here — the legacy of her exuberant care is still going strong ✨.—