Al Batt’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday.

No sun and no flowers. It must be November.

The scent of pumpkin spice filled the air.

Perfect weather had gone elsewhere.

A tree fractured into hundreds of blackbirds. Their numbers caused me to consider an Avogadro’s number of things that I needed to do. Avogadro’s number is the number of units in one mole of a substance and is equal to 6.022140857 times 10 to the 23rd power. That’s around 602,214,150,000,000,000,000,000 to 602,250,000,000,000,000,000,000. I think. It’s been a long time since chemistry and physics classes. I had things to do. Chores to finish, dirt to scratch and eggs to lay. E.B. White, wrote, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

The crops are in. Mostly.

“In” means many things. In a wagon, truck, bin or dreams.

It’s a busy time for agricultural engineers involved in a mad rush to harvest all that needs harvesting. Equipment breakdowns leave farmers feeling as if they were a second cousin’s ex-husband at the reading of her rich, great uncle’s will. Skinned knuckles taught many a farm boy how to cuss. Farmers eat when they can, sometimes settling for air pudding and wind sauce. Like all of us, they endeavor to make more than they spend.

Leaves pile up. Owners of leaf blowers fight duels with the wind.

Campaign ads pile up like leaves in the mailbox. Most are sent by PACs that find great joy in polishing their own halos by degrading others. “We are right and everyone else is an idiot,” they declare. They go overboard like a bread crust on a fishing boat. I hope they feel guilty.

I’ve kept an eye out for a Bigfoot. Folks used to see a Bigfoot and UFOs with startling regularity. Fuzzy photographs of such sightings proliferated. Then most of the human population began carrying cameras of one kind or another and the subjects went away. I’ll keep looking. Maybe I’ll see a mountain lion or a Minnesota Vikings Super Bowl Championship. Well, maybe I’ll see a mountain lion.

I stopped at a fast food restaurant. I went in. I don’t often use drive-through lanes because I don’t care to travel with petrified french fries hiding under the car seats. I flung a fang into something disguised as a hamburger. It wasn’t the best food, but it arrived quickly. That’s the American way. I carried a notebook and added to my list of things to do.

  I was taught to write in cursive, and I think there are virtues to that practice. The sad thing is that my handwriting has deteriorated as if it were being swallowed in small increments by time.

A friend stopped by and asked how to get rid of the hiccups. I told her that she should say “pineapple” until the hiccups went away. I hoped she had a plethora of patience.

A man walked past with shoes untied. I like sandals. They don’t need tying. Therefore, they don’t become untied. That saves time. Keeping laces tied can be challenging. I learned that if you can’t tie good knots, tie lots of them.

A young woman stood nearby, speaking firmly into her cellphone, “I can’t find it on the map and I’m in it!” I watched as her cellphone fell from her hand. She grabbed for it, managing to tip it before it hit the hard floor with a crack. Gravity isn’t a cellphone’s best friend, but it’s the law.

I left the eatery and walked to my car where a Honeycrisp apple waited. We each have a favorite apple. I enjoy a good apple after a bad hamburger. It’s a habit. Each time the neighbors had a baby, they bought a new car. That was their habit. We enjoy lives that centuries of kings and queens could only dream of, and I remain optimistic that there will be another presidential election in 2020.

A friend fears lions. It’s an irrational fear, but he claims to have never once been killed by a lion. He has a point. He lives in Nebraska. I told him that he shouldn’t worry.

He said, “Lions can run 30 mph. I’m only about 15 minutes away from the zoo. A lion could be at my door in a half hour.”

Today won’t be perfect. That’s not the way a November day or any other day works, but if there is no lion at your door, your life is either good or you live more than 15 minutes from a zoo.