Opening the blind on the window at the top of the stairs, one morning this week, gave me a view of sunrise I haven’t seen before. Mostly, I kind of wince when I open that blind, still missing the maple tree we had to take down last summer. The wince has been more pronounced, now that autumn’s in its glory, because that maple used to turn a yellow so golden that it seemed to radiate light. Many times, over the years, I reached over to turn off a light in an unused room, only to find that no light was on. The brightness was maple glow.
Sunrise surprised me this time for a similar reason. The sky was pink and orange with the dawning light, but the colors kept right on going, out of the sky and into the treetops, the gorgeous red treetops that had been hidden by our maple. The trees, while they hold their leaves, look like so many clouds, joining earth to sky.
Around the neighborhood now, leaves are coming down. Some get raked into piles on lawns. Some drift and scatter of their own accord. Children throw others into the air, in joy. And so the colors continue, from the sky to the trees to the ground.
This morning’s walk featured splashes of color from an unexpected quarter, as an entire The fact that it’s cool and drizzly today did not seem to matter to them. Their smiles were as bright as their jackets and hats. A volunteer said that, over the course of the day, every grade will have its turn to find the numbered pumpkins that mark the route.
A spectacular bit of color marks the north side of Jackson Road, on the city’s west side: a purple aster. The bush is the size of a big, really comfortable easy chair, which makes it hard to miss. But it may also be one of the few bits of flora that’s that color, right now. Everywhere else you look, you see green, yellow, gold, peach, orange, scarlet, deep wine red—warm colors in their plenty. But if you want to see jaw-dropping, what-was-that purple, head out Jackson Road.
A bit of autumn’s bounty disappeared a few days ago. We live near a community garden, a large portion of which is tended by a very senior gentleman and his cadre of advisees. Their gardens are wildly successful, year after year, and take a lot of work. Near the end of the growing season, the VSG plants a shelter. He builds a tall structure of pieces of wood, extending from the end of the garden, and trains zucchini vines over them.
Leaves soon create shade. Then squash blossoms adorn it. Then the VSG brings a chair and sits in the dappled light while he rests from his labors. With fall come zucchini, draping their long shapes down from above. And this week, the chair and shelter disappeared, tidied away, zucchini harvested and the dedicated pieces of wood bundled and stowed for another year.
We’ve reached the point in the season when fallen leaves skitter, a sound I especially associate with Halloween. Skittering can happen anytime and anywhere, as kids dart about in costumes on that spookiest of nights, and it sounds different after dark. The faintest whisper of breeze stirs motion in dried leaves.
Bigger puffs of air render leaves downright dramatic. I remember coming home from elementary school one day when I was little, to find the leaves in the little courtyard by our back door racing around in a circle, their own maelstrom.
Aha! I thought. This is what Clement Moore meant when he said, “As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly!” Our leaves, like Moore’s, did meet with an obstacle and mount to the sky, climbing the walls and higher than the roof. It was thrilling to observe.
Early in the autumn, when leaves are just beginning to detach from trees, it has always felt like a blessing to have a leaf fall on you. We used to run all over, as kids, to put ourselves in the way of an airborne leaf, and celebrate if we scored. Maple leaves were particular favorites–plentiful, bright, and big.
At this point of the fall season, leaves are coming down in great numbers, giving rise to the oft-heard expression, “It’s raining leaves.” They fall on everything and everyone in late October. Leaf encounters require no course changes at all. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and you’re good. It’s all good. And it still feels like blessings. Blessings, blessings everywhere.
Have a delightful and skittery Halloween.
25 October 2024