The most vivid tree in our yard is one we never planted. It’s a volunteer, little more than a weed for years and now coming fully into its own.
Especially at this time of year, when it seems to glow from within.
The poplars and oaks are bare now, even the Kwanzan cherry has dropped its golden leaves.
But the Japanese maple flames on…
These are good days for morning people.
No more darkness at 7 a.m., no more rolling over and drifting back to sleep, pretending it’s “still nighttime” even though a quick glance at the clock reveals that it most certainly is not.
The time change has given us back our precious early hours and we must decide what to do with them: a walk, a blog post, a head start on homework? All of these and more?
One thing is clear, though, and that’s the urgency to use these hours now, while we have them, because in a month or so, it will once again be dark at 7 a.m.
(Morning light illuminates a tributary of Little Difficult Run.)
Yesterday’s walk took me on the Reston trail that loops behind the church, a lofty forest and a most beauteous sight on a warm and breezy late fall morning.
I paused several times to snap a photo, to catch an angle of light, a leaf in its falling.
I noticed how tumbling leaves sometimes snag and catch, land on other leaves, which cup and protect them, as if to say, we’ll keep you here another day, here on a branch and not on the ground. We’ll keep you upright, limb-bound, a creature of air not yet of earth.
The poet John Keats described autumn as the “season of mist and mellow fruitfulness.” But this is one of the first foggy mornings we’ve had all fall.
It’s a lovely one, though, softening the vivid yellows of the tulip poplar leaves, making it difficult to see the houses across the backyard, let alone across the street.
Fog is atmospheric and perfect for this morning, post ghosts and goblins, the feast of all saints and the eve of all souls.
It’s warmer this morning, a beckoning kind of warmth, a come-out-and-walk-in-me warmth. I need to get up and get out in it, but first I want to write about the leaves, about how somehow, despite the three (3!) trees we lost last month there are still piles of leaves in the yard.
I must put those leaves in perspective, though, remember the depth of them in the old days, when raking was even more daunting than it is now and my efforts were often undermined by three giggly girls jumping and playing in them.
Now the girls are grown and the leaves are sparser, the muscles weaker, too, so perhaps it all balances out. I’d like to think it does.
It was 35 when I woke up this morning, a temperature that I associate far more with winter than with fall. It’s too early, I want to shout from the rooftops, knowing of course, that the weather gods will ignore me.
But maybe I should not go gently into that (not) good night. Maybe I should be a weather denier, one who strolls through gales in shirt sleeves and shorts.
Unfortunately, I’m just the opposite. Right now I’m wearing two layers of wool and one of cotton, and my warmest stretchy pants. One of my sweaters has a hood. I’m feeling a bit bulky … but almost warm.
(Looking at last week’s beach shots to warm myself up.)
It’s nothing personal, but sometimes I ignore the second bloom. Roses seem out of place this time of year — even a tease.
Their petals are so smooth and soft, not fluted and dry like the chrysanthemum.They belong to spring, to longer days and shorter nights.
But here they are, a final benediction, a farewell to summer. So I try to take them philosophically, to see in their freshness a promise of spring.
The beach was only five hours south, and I was away only four days, but I returned to a world of autumn color, more than I’m used to this time of year. A shot of cold air must have shocked trees into turning.
It was a pleasant surprise, a suitable homecoming for mid-October, as if while I was gone there had been a changing of the guard.
As I write this post, a shiver of wind shakes yellow leaves from the poplar and the witch hazel. The leaves are dancing as they fall, swirling to earth, covering the lawn, which has seen better days.
Yesterday I left summer behind. Now … it’s fall.
It’s happened here, and no wonder. The recent rain and chill have probably driven them to it. Or maybe it wasn’t the weather at all. Maybe it’s just their time.
Whatever the reason, the dogwood leaves have begun their march to extinction, their lovely russety turning. And berries have formed, their brightness a contrast to the subdued tone of the leaves.
I look at the dogwood a lot these days, since Copper likes to stand near it while we’re outside. And it has become for me a harbinger of another season, one of burnished brightness and long, still nights.
Often this time of year I write about the departing hummingbirds. It’s become a seasonal ritual, my sadness at seeing them leave every fall as dependable as my excitement at seeing them arrive every spring.
The melancholy of September is necessary, then, part of the cycle. It’s the only way (short of their year-round residency) to see them again. They must leave in order to return.
I thought I had seen the last of the hummingbirds a week or more ago, but on Monday I spied a small jeweled creature first at the feeder and then, moments later, hovering right in front of me.
Perhaps it had come to say thank you … or perhaps to say goodbye.