As I write this, it is the first of September. The nights dropped to 55 degrees. I donned my father’s flannel for my morning walk and my black corduroy jacket for my morning meeting. I pause on my walk to watch the geese change formation on their flight. I catch a feather dropped by a dove before it ever hits the ground. The day topped at 75 degrees, but I spent it indoors typing away. The afternoon will come, and the evening, and that sweet blessed breeze that signals the end of summer, the beginning of a change in the air. I don’t smell snow. I smell fall.
“The Gilmore Girls” was a comedy-drama television series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino. It stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel as Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, a mother–daughter pair living in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. It basked in the glories of fall and the quick comedic banter that became iconic to the show. I watched the show when I was pretty near the age of Rory, who begins as a 15-year-old daughter and ages her way to a Yale graduation. I watched it again as a mother. But when I watched it on repeat, it was a comfort show, full of familiar characters and quotable moments, quirks of people you live near who might drive you crazy, but you will do what you can to support.
The storyline itself can be thin at times, but the mother-daughter drama spans generations and emotions between the lead characters and Kelly Bishop, who plays Lorelei’s mother. I cannot recommend the show for everyone, but I love it.
Today, while scrolling social media, I saw the news that Danville will host Flannel & Foliage: An Autumn Weekend in Danville, three days of autumn festivities, coffee, cozy eats, and photo ops with stars from the show, including Scott Patterson, Kelly Bishop, Sean Gunn, Emily Kuroda, Yanic Truesdale, Todd Lowe, and John Cabrera. The names themselves are hardly recognizable to the average ear. But that’s okay; the fans know.
The festival will take place Oct. 23 to 25 and is free to attend, with some VIP tickets available. Ticket prices and releases have not yet been announced. Would I go, I wonder, with my biggest-fan-best-friend living a country away? Either way, I signed up for the email list.1
Organizers have said Danville was chosen for its small-town charm. And we know a thing or two about that in our towns.
“You finally found a way to fill September,” Lorelei told Taylor Doose, who runs just about everything in Stars Hollow, at the launch of a Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer festival. If we take our small towns together, it certainly feels like we could say the same as new events pop up each year. There is something to do just about every weekend, and even when the temperatures creep back up, the joy of fall and brisk mornings will not be daunted.
In our home, we celebrate September by reading apple-themed books from the Read Aloud Revival September book list. We sing the theme song from Disney’s Johnny Appleseed, and we used to buy bags and bags of Granny Smith apples on Tully Road, but this week they posted that, due to Mother Nature, no apples would be sold this year. It’s a change we’ll have to roll with, like so many others that come when tied to the land.
Those comfort shows probably help us escape all that. Such groundedness belongs to the likes of Wendell Berry, an author and poet who died on Aug. 31. His work celebrated the land and the roots that come only from a land well lived on, and long lived on. He wrote of the geese I hear overhead on my walk in “The Wild Geese” and concludes, “What we need is here.”
I’m so glad we live in a world of Septembers, to borrow from Anne of Green Gables, where fall beauty comes to its fullest in October. We have not the same experience in our climate, so I am basking in the now, the shift and the change that promises new and different days ahead.
We will not have apples there, so we will check the nearby fruit stands located all around us, visit The Red Apple Bakery in Arnold and Indigeny Reserve in Columbia, and keep it festive, albeit busy, all September long.
Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on Sept. 11, 2026. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.
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Reservations for the free spots filled up during the two days I neglected to check my work email. Oh well!