Posts Tagged ‘autumn leaves’
Leaves Leaving
Leaves were falling, just like embers
In colors red and gold, they set us on fire
Killing the Blues by Rowland Salley
I went after a little more late-season lawn mowing yesterday afternoon and it turned our backyard striped.
That is what happens when you mow over the leaves instead of raking them up first.
The leaves have been leaving the trees in an increasing amount with each passing day.
It creates a carpet of leaves beneath the trees that produce one of my favorite forest looks.
Cyndie’s prized “door table” under the trees becomes a mystical decoration in a picturesque nook where romping squirrels make so much noise it sounds like a deer must be running through.
Falling leaves. You know what that means?
Falling flakes won’t likely be very far behind.
.
.
Foggy Morning
The weather app on my phone notified me that we were under dense fog conditions first thing this morning. That proved to be a spot-on analysis.
It wasn’t all that obvious in the woods where Asher and I were breaking spider webs that crossed our trails. When we reached the fence of the back pasture, it was as if none of our neighbors existed.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The horses didn’t seem overly worried about their limited views. They were spread out with heads up when I came around the corner, appearing well aware of my arrival.
Every morning there is obvious evidence of burrowing critter activity in and around the barn overnight. There is enough spillage from the horses’ sloppy eating that barn pigeons and rodents find more than enough motivation to hang around. For some reason, this morning a couple of rodents didn’t wait until I was gone to emerge from their tunnels to scrounge. That’s the first time I have actually seen them.
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen the neighbor’s orange cat lurking around our property of late. I wonder if Asher would be okay with us getting a barn cat to keep the rodent population from exploding. In the meantime, we will be adding some traps in the barn.
One of our ash trees near the (vacant) chicken coop is proving to be our “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to the onset of autumn.
Every year it drops leaves sooner than most other trees have begun to change color. This year it stands out more than usual for being so bare-branched so soon.
Is the middle of September early for bare branches? Sure seems like it to me, especially when we have 80°F temperatures forecast for the coming week. It still feels an awful lot like summer around here, even with a cool fog blanketing the landscape this morning.
.
.
Falling Leaves
I recorded this just the other day as waves of leaf showers were falling.
.
.
Enjoy a few moments of this annual fall performance.
.
.
Pretty Peak
We are witnessing pretty close to peak colors around here now. It’s hard to tell if the next day will become even more brilliant or if leaves will have abruptly dropped to the ground en masse.
There are a few straggling trees still holding green leaves but the ones that blaze the best colors are maxing out. We are doing our best to soak up the scenery with full in-the-moment appreciation, never knowing when the polychromatic party might end. The critical ingredient for maximum spectacle is direct sunlight, so the degree of cloudy skies in the next few days will play a significant part in prolonging the autumnal glory we have been blessed with this year.
Complicating the situation is the extreme degree of parched soil we have been dealt, so we are also longing for an extended soaking rain. I guess one way to look at it is that either way, we win.
If it gets rainy, we will rejoice over the moisture. If it stays sunny, we continue to enjoy the wonderful fall colors.
(For the purposes of this positive-thinking exercise, I will be ignoring the possibility of the skies clouding over without ever providing a measurable amount of rain.)
As of yesterday afternoon, we were peaking out and loving it!
.
.
View Within
Living in farm country has exposed me to the life cycle of cultivated crops and I was just commenting to Cyndie the other day how entire fields of soybeans suddenly all turn from green to yellow-brown in about a day. I wondered what it is they trigger on. The hours of sunlight? The reduced angle of the sun? Some particular overnight low temperature?
Boom. All at once, the field is no longer green.
Walking through our woods yesterday, I realized some of the ground cover that grows beneath the canopy has abruptly traded its green color for yellow.
That is a blurry photo but I am using it anyway because it still shows exactly what I’m describing.
Driving through the countryside to see the fall colors won’t show you this version of autumn. The view from within the forests of the fading greenery provides a different perspective of transformation after summer is over.
I did succeed in capturing a couple of other views from yesterday that weren’t as blurry.
It won’t be long before our boardwalk will become entirely obscured by a thick blanket of leaves. You won’t see any of the wood blocks after the maple trees drop their leaves.
The views from within the forest of the changes from summer to fall are a wonderful compliment to the brightly colored tree tops available from a distance.
.
.
Admittedly Isolated
I’m home alone with the animals again this weekend and contemplating the incredible peacefulness and beauty that I enjoy the luxury of experiencing here every day. This morning the horses radiated peacefulness under a foggy wet blanket of sound-dampening air. It was Delilah who disrupted things every so often with her random barks of alarm over imagined threats that really don’t deserve to be barked at from my perspective.
As I methodically made my way around the paddocks to scoop up recent manure piles, my mind meandered through so many trials and tribulations that we aren’t facing.
Our country has not been invaded and bombed by a bordering nation that was pretending to be doing our people a favor. Our region has yet to be torched by wildfires or swamped by unprecedented flash flooding. Extremist politicians haven’t maliciously trafficked hapless immigrants to our doorstep. We are not experiencing a shortage of food or potable water. We are not struggling with the debilitations of long-COVID infection.
The much more benign burdens directly impacting me this day include two issues that aren’t happening as swiftly as I wish. I’m wondering if the technician who will splice our fiber optic cable at the base of the utility pole across the street from our driveway works on Saturdays. Nobody showed up by the end of the day yesterday even though the cable to our house was buried last Tuesday.
I’m also anxious to receive a promised bid from our favorite excavating business regarding the landscaping of the slopes on either side of our new driveway. We’ve decided the job is too big to accomplish on our own and will require a truckload of dirt they can provide. It’s been a week since he was here to discuss the issues.
It’s pretty easy for me to preach about having a positive attitude about how great it is to be alive when I reside in a sanctuary of natural beauty and affluent comforts. I am sensitive about boasting too assertively from our admittedly isolated circumstances in the world, but my perspective is coming from having successfully treated a depression that shadowed much of my earlier life.
Our daughter is enduring the stress of knowing a vulnerable adult who walked out of her music school before his father did and has now been missing for days. Our hearts ache for those who are suffering.
I walk through our woods to a soundtrack of calling birds and water droplets coming down from wet tree leaves, the autumn aromas of fallen leaves just beginning to become noticeable. The horses huff a big sigh as I show up to clean the area beneath the overhang and serve up their pans of feed.
What can I do but send the love I experience out into the universe to flow toward all who face difficulties that I struggle to fathom, recognizing the privilege of my isolation.
.
.
Relative Something 