Breezy, cold and clear. Perfect weather for my favorite autumn sport, watching leaves fall: those that tumble, those that plummet, those that twirl.
fall foliage
Rising late to find the sun already in the trees and the air redolent of autumn. Silhouettes of birds pass as quietly as thoughts through the canopy.
A couple of cold nights and the yellow has spread like a contagion through the birches. A squirrel hangs down among the green walnuts.
Snow on the ground and in the air. When the wind eddies around to the east, a great flock of shriveled leaves lifts off from the lilac.
Flakes in the air. The lilac leaves hold on, faded and stiff. And with my brown clothes and dark red hat, I suddenly realize I match the oaks.
Clearing sky after a brief snow squall. The ridgeside, slick with leaves of slowly fading colors, shines like a salamander in the sun.
A lone crow like a town crier repeating the same bit of news: how the rising sun, newly naked, is ablaze beneath the crowns of the oaks.
Two degrees above freezing with a dull gray sky—very Novemberish. Except the trees aren’t bare, the oaks yet to reach their peak of color.
They’re shapeshifting daily now, the faces in the thinning treetops silhouetted against the dawn sky. I push my glasses down to unblur the moon.
On a dark morning, fall colors that seemed bland yesterday are bright embers. Behind the still-green lilac, a deer’s pale legs.
Breezy drizzle mixing in with falling leaves—those that twirl, those that spiral, those that somersault, those that glide.
Gloomy with a few drops of rain. I spot a new-to-me Virginia creeper six feet from the porch: that crimson.
With the understory losing its leaves, the forest is threadbare, shot through with light. In the herb bed, a volunteer tomato is in bloom.
Sunrise. Fingers of orange light through orange leaves. After the furnace cycles off, the silence seems enormous.