Fall Cometh

When I woke up on Sunday, I could smell Fall. For the first time this year, I stepped outside my apartment and the smell of dank earth and dying leaves punctuated the air. The sky was grey, the temperature was below 20 degrees Celsius and the smell was definitely Fall.

I think I'm ready. We had such an incredible summer, I can't complain now about the dropping temperatures. It signals a total overhaul of the clothes cupboards, moving the whites to the back and the camels and darker colors to the front. It means shorter days and colder nights. Cups of hot chocolate instead of pineapple juice, and thick, yummy soups instead of salads. It also means a totally different color palette surrounding me; red apples, bright orange pumpkins, burnt yellow grass, chocolates, caramel and tartans. I know I'm ready.

To herald this change, I stole the Anesthetist's car while he was tinkering on the boat and went for some heavenly ambles in a new-found and now favorite Ward Pound Ridge Reserve, an hour north of the city. It is 4200 acres of rivers, pastures and forest. A great place to relish these wonderful fall colors and smells!

Snowy Interlude

We had a slight aberration in the weather pattern yesterday. We are in fall, the temperature is above freezing, the leaves are still on the trees, some haven't even turned yet and there was a snowstorm! Crazy. So of course I dragged the anesthetist on a walk upstate today to view the "winter wonderland." Pretty spectacular seeing the snow against the fall colors.

Change of Season Meltdown

I had a major meltdown last week. You know the one; contents of bag thrown onto the floor, clothes flying, door banging, heavy footfall, screeching banshee etc. It was my first for a long time and certainly the first in front of the Anesthetist. I don't think he knew what hit him.  He sat on the couch in the dark staring at a wall until I had calmed down.

It all started because I couldn't find my keys - the product of being totally disorganized due to 11 hour work days, constantly traipsing between my house and his, never being in the city because of travel and really just because of a general feeling of exhaustion and hopelessness.

So this weekend, I decided to take my life back into my own hands. I cancelled a gorgeous country weekend away with the grey-haired wonder and decided to "get stuff done." I think the anesthetist was genuinely relieved to not have Medusa sitting next to him in the car for 7 hours. So was I. It meant that time was filled instead with a massage, yoga, reading, admin, fall wardrobe shopping and a catch up on all things wonderful about the start of fall in this city!

Fall is the best time to be in New York. Not only is the weather (usually) perfect, but the city comes to life with a gazillion cultural treats. After voraciously reading the NY Times this weekend, here are my top picks so far if you are going to be here:

• Italian conceptual artist and joker Maurizio Cattelan is about to take over the Guggenheim. There was a great piece in the New York Times on Sunday you can hopefully read HERE.
• Beer heiress Daphne Guinness gets a solo exhibition focusing on her extraordinary wardrobe at the Fashion Institute of Technology Museum
• Harpers Bazaar celebrates 10 years of high-impact fashion photography at the ICP
• Frank Langella (of Frost/ Nixon fame) hits Broadway in Man and Boy
• The incredibly sublime White Light Festival at Lincoln Centre has a second airing in November. I wrote a piece here about one of the concerts last year.
• It's opera season again! This year The Met's program includes the usual faves like Aida, Barber of Seville and La Boheme,  plus Wagner's Ring cycle. There's nothing like frocking up to attend one of the world's most venerable institutions.
• Woody Allan and Ethan Cohen have written one act plays as part of a Broadway program called Relatively Speaking, directed by John Turturro.
• And of course, everyone is talking about the De Kooning retrospective at MoMa. 

So get those culture boots on and start preparing to wait in long lines!

image: Steven Klein

Walking Dunes

Fall came quickly last week. With a small shift in the wind, the temperature plummeted to 10 degrees.

So too do the sands of the 'Walking Dunes' shift. Located beside Napeague Bay in Amagansett,  they have "walked" for thousands of years with the help of the powerful northwest wind. Some years they shift by 3 miles apparently. As a result, phantom woods are uncovered and other more recent trees and shrubs become newly covered for their long sandy slumber.

It's the perfect place for a fall walk. Some of the Dunes are 50 feet high, the view over the bay is idyllic and you pass through forests of scrub oak, patches of beach plums (no fruit yet unfortunately) and cranberry bogs. It's beautiful and serene, with only the sound of the wind and, if you listen closely, the slow march of the sand.

Fall Colors

Last weekend I went to the Catskills to catch the tail end of the fall foilage. "Leaf peeping" they call it here.

We were probably there a week too late, but there were still some gorgeous colors. There is nothing more beautiful than a clear blue sky, crisp air, the smell of damp earth and the autumn hues.

Fall

I think Fall is my favorite season in New York. Nature's colors are stunning - golds and rusts and bright red, and hopefully bright blue skies. Sydney doesn't really have an Autumn, so it makes it all the more exciting here. Americans are so obsessed with the leaf turning period that they have an official name: "leaf peepers"! There are websites that are devoted to daily updates of where the best colors can be seen. For me, Central Park is one of the best places and easiest. This is what it looked like last week:

At the Union Square Greenmarket, the local produce is as colorful as the leaves in Central Park:

And then here is "my" village turning: