I’ve never liked the fall. Beautiful as it is, it’s too nostalgic for me, too fraught with endings, reminiscences, and bittersweet goodbyes. The only unequivocal joy about the season is football, and that’s not enough to make me change my mind.

Because fall means winter is coming, and I can’t stand the cold. So spring is best; things blooming and getting warmer and just beginning.

But here we are, deep into autumn, and there’s no denying it. I take my comforts where I can, as the days dwindle down and the light pulls itself back like a girl who no longer favors your attentions.

One of the best consolations has to lie in the food that the season affords; it’s time for oysters now (they’re only good if there’s an “r” in the month)—if you can get them, what with the oil spill, and there are lots of apples around, of every variety. Meals will be heartier in the coming days, richer and hotter and spicier; you’ll have to blow on them for a second or two, to cool them off.

But of all the great foods of the fall, one of the best is greens. Where I grew up, down South, turnip greens are being picked around this time, along with mustard greens, and a new hybrid, called tender greens. They all taste pretty much the same, though; if you eat them raw, you’ll notice a spiky sharpness at the end, a nice zesty punch.

I was recently home for the weekend, and my father took me to the farm of one of his old friends to “pick a mess of greens.” If you like them slightly bitter, they’re best after the first frost, and that event had already come and gone when I was there. The truth is, greens like this only begin to make at the end of the summer. You plant them in late September (just throw a handful over your shoulder and ignore them, a seasoned farmer told me once; when you turn back around, they’ll cover the field), and as they drink up the last of the summer rains, they thrive. When you go to pick them, you pinch off the leaves above the stem and fill up big bags as full as you can. There’s no such thing as too much.

When you get home, the washing begins. Filling half of a double sink with cold water, and with a dash of salt to kill any bugs, you soak mounds and mounds of the leaves until the water shows clean of grit. Big pots come out, and a slice of fat back or a plug of bacon goes in. After the fat’s released, the greens go into the bubbling water.

Then they’re cooked, turned, and more added, on and on and on until the humongous heap has reduced down. This takes a while, and you need to have a cast iron skillet of corn bread going, timed so that it’s golden hot and ready for butter. Eat the greens with a wallop of Tabasco and black pepper, served in a bowl dedicated solely to their goodness, with a triangle of buttered cornbread by their ever-loving side.

But of course, all that I’ve just related has made me wistful, precisely as I knew it would. And it’s because the traditions of the fall come with a decided difference. Of the four seasons, it seems the rituals now contain a caution—a lovely, gentle caution—but a caution nonetheless: That things don’t last; that you must look around; that you must prepare. You cannot be distracted by the glory of summer and the length of its light. It might win you into sloth or presumption, which you cannot allow.

So that morning, in the patch, heedful, I sat on my haunches from time to time and watched my father and his friend. They are two doctors, both in their eighties, both from very humble beginnings. As they worked, they talked, reaching back into their pasts and drawing out priceless things for me to hear. They called upon experiences long before their schooling, ages before their practices—upon a time when everyone had a patch of greens like this.

As they bent their backs to the work, the sun grew hot—November is funny here, cool to cold at night, but then quite warm in the day—almost warm enough to make you forget what time of year it is. They shed their coats and pushed up their sleeves. All around, the trees drooped with candied foliage—red and orange and yellow. The sky was a robin’s egg blue. I watched them, and joined my work to theirs.

You have to get the greens now, soon, I heard them say. Because a “killing frost” will come at some point. It might be a ways off yet, but it will come nonetheless. Soon, the cold will fall like a hammer, and the rime will lie too hard and bite too strong. It will shellac the leaves and pierce the root of all that grows so greenly. So you have to gather now, they said; while you can.

While it’s still warm, and while there’s still light.