Autumnal Equinox

Apparently, today is deemed the first day of Fall. I've been ruminating on this concept all day, wondering WHO? decided this? The weather seems to be telling us otherwise...

This made me want to be difficult and buck the system. Who is to tell me that I have to head into fall? Come on now, if you're going to tell me it's fall, give me fall weather: cool temperatures, green hills, a little rain.  Is that too much to ask?  But no. So, I made ice tea in my SUMMER container, and I decided to attract some hummingbirds by making them some pretty red food. So there! This is adverse as I can get at bucking the fall system. ;-)

But my inquisitive mind made me look into this a little further and educate myself. Lucky for all of you,  I have decided to educate you too. So, FYI: the September or Autumnal Equinox occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator and moves southward in the northern hemisphere. "The location on the earth where the sun is directly overhead at solar noon is known as the subsolar point. The subsolar point occurs on the equator during the September equinox and March equinox.  At that time, the earth’s axis of rotation is perpendicular to the line connecting the centers of the earth and the sun."  (http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/september-equinox.html)  Wow!  Confused yet?  There's more.  The September equinox occurs this year at exactly 21:19 Coordinated Universal Time (also known as UTC -- Why isn't it CUT?  Beats me!).  For those of us out West, the Pacific standard time zone is UTC-8.  The Eastern standard time zone is UTC-5.  And for those of you in the middle, I'll let you figure it out.  The UTC apparently has something to do with Greenwich and solar time and Leap seconds, but this is where you start to lose interest and my brain has started to hurt, so that's as educated as I'm going to get on the September Equinox.  And if you want to know more, I'll let you look it up!

Regardless, enjoy the coming fall weather and fall colors whereever you might be!  I know I will, when it finally decides to come...