Cold and gray, with the wind hissing through the last few oak leaves still on the trees. The male Carolina wren sleeps in past his mate, her ‘response’ preceding his call by nearly five minutes.
fall foliage
A bitter wind has brought the first, thin snowfall. I open my folding seat cushion and find a yellow leaf nestled like a letter in an envelope.
The red of the oaks gets an assist, first from the dawn and then the sunrise, blazing scarlet, copper or burgundy in each vase-shaped crown.
Red sky behind red leaves at sunrise. In the yard, big winds have stripped the tulip tree of all but its smallest leaves—the sheerest of dresses.
Clear and still, with patches of light frost. The sky has made considerable inroads into the forest just since yesterday. A jay’s waking call elicits a reply from the far ridge: softer notes at first, then the familiar jeer.
Gray skies with a bitter wind. Colored leaves fly past. A pair of gray squirrels meet on the trunk of a black locust and touch snouts.
Bright periods alternate with gloom on a cool, cloudy morning, with an intermittent breeze paging through the tulip tree leaves. A sound like the clacking of a typewriter as a squirrel trots across the metal roof overhead.
Heavily gray skies at mid-morning. A tree cricket trills in the garden—a bright drone note. The wind goes past, releasing a small crowd of yellow leaves.
Another classic October morning, crisp and clear. From the sun-struck treetops, a brown-headed cowbird’s liquid note. In the still air, a falling leaf spirals and somersaults, taking its time.
A cold front has delivered October’s bright blue weather right on schedule. Yellow leaves flutter down in the breeze. A Carolina wren draws again and again from a seemingly inexhaustible well of song.
A sunrise muted by cirrus. Dew dripping from the roof. The undeniable brownness of leaves that had been bright as holiday cards: death has taken that holiday, it seems.
There’s more yellow than ever in the woods’ edge trees, in the spicebushes, in the meadows filled with goldenrod, and now the sun—the opposite of mellow among the yellow leaves of a black birch.
Inside a white whale of fog, the trees drip and drop yellow leaves, and the sun is felt more than seen, with a faint wash of blue beyond.
The tiny, second-string leaves the lilac put out in September have yellowed, glowing in the fog and drizzle like the bright chirps of sparrows.