The neighbor’s rooster is beginning to sound like a rooster. I notice that one side of the big maple has turned prematurely red.
fall foliage
Classic November sky, with here a light patch and here a dark—a full palette of grays. Wind riffles the oak leaves, now more brown than red.
After another cold night, the lilac is carpeting its corner of the yard with the yellow-green curls of its suddenly devalued currency.
Sunny and almost warm. Armadas of leaves sail out across the meadow. A pale green lacewing flutters past the porch, fighting a headwind.
Cold and clear. Half the trees on the ridge are bare now, leaving narrow, blue windows all along the crest for the sun to pour through.
Cloudy and brisk; the woods are full of falling leaves. A sharp-shinned hawk flaps and glides just above the treetops, heading south.
The fluting of geese from somewhere above the clouds. A bowhunter dressed in green camouflage walks out of the autumn woods.
Every morning more shards of ridge-top sky are visible through the trees. In the black birch’s yellow crown, yellow-rumped warblers.
With every gust of wind, a mob of yellow leaves comes swirling out over the meadow. From just inside the woods’ edge, the crash of a limb.
Silent as a thief, this sun climbing through the trees. The fog lifted an hour ago, but steam still rises from the yellow leaves.
A wood pewee calls from the edge of the meadow. The air has turned autumnal. The sun comes out and doubles the number of yellow leaves.
The soft clatter of oak leaves on their way to the ground. Dull thumps as a pileated woodpecker excavates a hole, crest like a flaming axe.
A breeze carries leaves from the dark woods to spiral down into the sunlit yard. A deer feeds on the lilac—the only remaining greenery.
The yard is white with the first frost, prostrate myrtle and stiltgrass leaves outlined as if in chalk. Leaves spiral down in the still air.