We’ve had frost on the car windshield a few mornings in the past week. I brought my plants in from the porch and balcony to protect them from freezing temperatures. We’ve had a fire in the woodstove for three days in a row. I guess it’s time to face the fact that fall is well and truly here.

For most of my life I have loved the fall season, but I’m always a bit apprehensive when facing the business end of a Swedish fall. Sometimes we have nice falls here, with crisp, sunny days and a slow decline–pessimistic, I know, but I can’t help but think of it as a decline–into winter. More often, it seems, fall is dreary and grey and scarcely discernable as anything more than early winter. Sometimes we get snow as soon as early or mid-October, and that makes for a long, long several months until spring makes an appearance in April or May (some will say it comes earlier, but as far as I’m concerned it’s not really spring until all the snow is gone).

As I mentioned earlier, we moved all the pelargoniums/geraniums inside a couple of days ago, and now it’s pretty crowded in the little bedroom that I’ve taken over for a plant room. I did a quick head count, and I’ve got well over fifty plants in there, as well as another couple of dozen installed on various windowsills throughout the house. Part of me thinks that I should thin out the herd a little, but I’ve grown rather attached to all of them.