Autumn in the Pacific Northwest. A Sensory Treat

It's officially still summer, but it already feels like autumn here in the Pacific Northwest. I'm originally from southern Ontario, and fall in Seattle is quite a different experience. I find it starts sooner - I already see lots of yellow and falling leaves in my walks around Discovery Park.

Fall here is a bit softer, visually and in terms of temperatures, not the abundant blazing colors of my Canadian past, but still beautiful, and continuing along its mild path, right through late November's American Thanksgiving. And fall is delicious, with the harvest coming in from both Western and Eastern Wasington and the best apples all year round available right now.

Not to mention the flowers...

On Etsy, MrKittysSoapShop curated this lovely treasury celebrating the magic that is autumn in the Pacific Northwest.

I'm thrilled my "Seattle's Bluest Skies" bracelet from Bumbershoot Designs was included.  This is a truly Seattle-inspired design, for more about this jewelry design, see this blog post. And the sky in Seattle today is just exactly this shade of blue...

The bluest skies are in Seattle

The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle.

And the hills the greenest green, in Seattle.

Like a beautiful child growing up free and wild,

Full of hopes and full of fears,

Full of laughter full of tears,

Full of dreams to last the years in Seattle, in Seattle.


Recognize that song? It is the theme song to the TV series "Here Come the Brides" that ran from 1968 to 1970 on ABC. The series was based on a piece of Seattle history: Asa Mercer's efforts to secure brides in the east for eligible Seattle bachelors. According to J Kingston Pierce's book, "Eccentric Seattle", the original party of white settlers arriving in Seattle in 1851 were evenly divided between men and women but after about 10 years, as the number increased to 200 or so, men outnumbered women about 9:1. Asa set out to solve Seattle's "woman problem". It turns out it was not an easy task to convince unmarried women to leave their homes and make the journey to the Pacific Northwest. Asa's first trip to the east resulted in 11 women returning to Seattle with him and his second trip, right at the time of Lincoln's assassination, resulted in 34 new recruits (he had planned for 500). These are "the Mercer Girls", upon whom the TV series was based.

Creativity is a funny thing. It's the first line of the song above that gave me the inspiration for this bracelet:


The song got me reflecting on whether or not the bluest skies really are in Seattle. I'm betting there are lots of places with amazing skies, but what I do know is that after weeks and weeks of rain, when the sun comes out, the sky does look pretty blue! (Check out the photo in the previous post...) It's all relative, I guess.