So… Labor Day is over, and school has more or less begun. So… is it fall yet?

As far as meteorologists are concerned, fall started on September 1, and runs through November 30. OFFICIAL fall, as defined by astronomers, starts on the autumnal equinox (September 22), and runs through to the winter solstice (December 21).

For most of us, the dividing line comes when we break out of that oppressive August heat, and into much cooler, breezier air. For us in the northeast (I grew up in Rhode Island, now live in the Finger Lakes), that happens right around the first week of September. One of these mornings… quite possibly in September… we’ll actually wake up to frost.

Labor Day weekend is usually adequate for swimming, and maybe the next weekend too. In some years you might squeeze out short dips for even a week or two after that, but usually the holiday, or the weekend after, marks the limit.

In Rhode Island one sign of fall is a gang of men and boys… often including me, when I lived there… going from place to place around the pond, hauling in rafts and docks, and heaving their waterlogged bulk up onto the shore, out of the ice that would one day form.

The last monarchs flutter by, struggling toward a southern clime that only a few of them will reach. We won’t rejoice in their red-and-black flashes again until ever-returning spring.

The haunting clamor of the wild geese, passing over in their wedges, makes a mournful joy. If fall has a signature tune on the soundtrack, it’s the call of the Canada geese, with “summer sun upon their wings, winter in their cry.”

Many of our summer birds disappear, the juncos drift down from higher elevations, and our winter birds suddenly dominate the landscape. They’ve been inspecting our feeders for weeks, although here in bear country, I won’t fill them until November. Before too long our yards will be filled with juncos, blue jays, goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches, mourning doves, sparrows, flickers, finches, and redbellies. Not to mention starlings and crows.

Our apple orchards and our cider mills, largely unnoticed much of the summer, become busy happy places. Pumpkins appear in the stores and stands, on the porches and windowsills. Pumpkin spice appears in coffee, cakes, and donuts, and in a remarkable list of other foodstuffs. Some farmers create maize mazes.

Acorns crunch beneath our feet, and horse chestnuts get kicked down the sidewalk. We finally stop mowing the lawn. Orion rises higher and higher in the night sky.

One annoying morning we’ll be rifling through closets and drawers, snapping out questions about where we put the gloves, mittens, and stocking caps. One day, without even noticing that we’ve crossed a dividing line, we’ll be putting on sweaters. We won’t realize it at the time, and we won’t think about it later, but one day will be the last day we wear shorts.

Sales of soda and lemonade will nose-dive, though it’s still a little early for hot chocolate. Cream of Wheat, on the other hand, will reappear on breakfast tables.

Halloween ecstacies will blanket the stores, followed by Thanksgiving floods.

And, of course, the leaves will change. They’re starting already, but as the month and the season wear on the colors will explode. For much of the world, and even much of the nation, the color change is rather subdued. For us in the northeast, Mother Nature flings her entire palette onto our forests. Pay attention when she does. And happy fall.