Autumn Afternoon

A late walk through the woods, along the lake, over the bridge, and back to where I started from.

No question what time of year it is. If the leaves didn't clue me in ...

the peg-legged skeleton pirate did. 

But there are still patches of green, remnants of summer left behind. 

A Glow from Within

The most vivid tree in our yard is one we never planted. It's a volunteer, little more than a weed for years and now coming fully into its own. 

Especially at this time of year, when it seems to glow from within.

The poplars and oaks are bare now, even the Kwanzan cherry has dropped its golden leaves. 

But the Japanese maple flames on...

Leaf on Leaf

Yesterday's walk took me on the Reston trail that loops behind the church, a lofty forest and a most beauteous sight on a warm and breezy late fall morning. 

I paused several times to snap a photo, to catch an angle of light, a leaf in its falling. 

I noticed how tumbling leaves sometimes snag and catch, land on other leaves, which cup and protect them, as if to say, we'll keep you here another day, here on a branch and not on the ground. We'll keep you upright, limb-bound, a creature of air not yet of earth. 

Saints and Souls

The poet John Keats described autumn as the "season of mist and mellow fruitfulness." But this is one of the first foggy mornings we've had all fall. 

It's a lovely one, though, softening the vivid yellows of the tulip poplar leaves, making it difficult to see the houses across the backyard, let alone across the street.

Fog is atmospheric and perfect for this morning, post ghosts and goblins, the feast of all saints and the eve of all souls. 

Leaves in Balance

It's warmer this morning, a beckoning kind of warmth, a come-out-and-walk-in-me warmth. I need to get up and get out in it, but first I want to write about the leaves, about how somehow, despite the three (3!) trees we lost last month there are still piles of leaves in the yard. 

I must put those leaves in perspective, though, remember the depth of them in the old days, when raking was even more daunting than it is now and my efforts were often undermined by three giggly girls jumping and playing in them. 

Now the girls are grown and the leaves are sparser, the muscles weaker, too, so perhaps it all balances out. I'd like to think it does.

Ignoring the Roses

It's nothing personal, but sometimes I ignore the second bloom. Roses seem out of place this time of year — even a tease. 

Their petals are so smooth and soft, not fluted and dry like the chrysanthemum.They belong to spring, to longer days and shorter nights.

But here they are, a final benediction, a farewell to summer. So I try to take them philosophically, to see in their freshness a promise of spring.

Changing of the Guard

The beach was only five hours south, and I was away only four days, but I returned to a world of autumn color, more than I'm used to this time of year.  A shot of cold air must have shocked trees into turning. 

It was a pleasant surprise, a suitable homecoming for mid-October, as if while I was gone there had been a changing of the guard.

As I write this post, a shiver of wind shakes yellow leaves from the poplar and the witch hazel. The leaves are dancing as they fall, swirling to earth, covering the lawn, which has seen better days.

Yesterday I left summer behind. Now ... it's fall. 

The Harbinger

It's happened here, and no wonder. The recent rain and chill have probably driven them to it. Or maybe it wasn't the weather at all. Maybe it's just their time.

Whatever the reason, the dogwood leaves have begun their march to extinction, their lovely russety turning. And berries have formed, their brightness a contrast to the subdued tone of the leaves.

I look at the dogwood a lot these days, since Copper likes to stand near it while we're outside. And it has become for me a harbinger of another season, one of burnished brightness and long, still nights. 

Perfect Peaches

It's as if the peaches had been practicing all season to look this rosy and smooth-skinned, this thoroughly delicious.  "Last big picking," they were billed, giving those of us who'd come to haunt this particular booth at the Wednesday farmers market ample warning: don't expect this fruit again until next July. 

I felt the same tug in my heart I'm getting when I notice turning leaves or lowered light. 

But who can complain when the tilt of the sun produces peaches like these? 

(The astute observer will spot an interloper in this photo. I threw in a lemon to keep the peaches company.)

In Spring and Fall

The Kwanzan cherry tree puts on quite a show in the spring. It's not the earliest bloomer; it waits until the soil has warmed and the forsythia and dogwood have paved the way. But when it finally gets going, it draws the eye to its big-fisted blossoms, its pink petals exploding from narrow stems.

What I've only started to appreciate is the show it puts on in autumn. Once again, it bides its time. Other leaves have changed, dried and blown away. But the leaves of the Kwanzan cherry have waited patiently — and this is their time.

They light up the late fall landscape, shimmering in dawns and dusks. They flutter in the breeze, brave flags waving. They gladden my heart each time I see them.

Way Too Early

The Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Rails to Trails path was bustling late yesterday when I finally made my way to it. There were runners and walkers and cyclists, mostly the latter zooming by with a brisk warning of "passing on the left." 

I slipped into what I always think of as the "bridle path" part of the trail, the unpaved route that runs alongside the asphalt. But due to the bridges over Herndon and Fairfax County Parkways, I couldn't always stay on that calmer and less traveled path. 

What I could do was to focus on the scenery I passed: the changing colors of the deciduous trees. 

The subtle beauty of the shaggy undergrowth ... and the sun setting way too early, once again.

A Walk Recorded

I took a stroll late yesterday through the gloaming, the exquisite though way-too-early gloaming — I was walking between 4 and 5! — then came home and wrote these words:

The late fall light is draining quickly from the sky and a bright near-half moon showing itself. There are the most delicate of evening sounds: a few hardy crickets, the bird that says "Judy" (did I determine that's a wren?) and various human-caused sounds — a pinging that could have come from a small forge but was likely a kid banging on a pipe — the distant downshift of a passing truck. But none of these sounds disturbed the peacefulness of the landscape. They only enhanced it. 

Some of the shorter shrubs have lost most of their leaves. Those that remain seem to be offering themselves for viewing, like golden coins on a platter. Back on my street, the russets and scarlets of the maples and oaks shimmered in the twilight. 

Night falls fast this time of year, but when it's warm, as it has been today, that doesn't seem to matter as much.

Golden Leaves

Midway through this mellow month, I sit outside at my "deck desk" with the backyard spread before me. The grass looks far less lush than it did a few months ago, the brown patches more numerous. But much effort has gone into that lawn, and I appreciate the grassy patches where they grow.

At the far back of the lot sits the new garden bench, its right side ever so slightly higher than its left, a detail I noticed only after I had posted the photo in a post about its arrival. 

That small imperfection fits the yard, melds perfectly with the weeds and the section of missing fence and the stray patches of poison ivy that are still here despite our best efforts. 

It's not a pristine backyard, but there are birds chirping and ornamental grasses flourishing and golden leaves that catch the light. 

To October

It's the first day of a new month, "the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," a phrase that has stayed with me since I read Keats' "To Autumn" in high school. 

What I don't remember are the later phrases, these sumptuous descriptions: "close-bosom friend of the maturing sun" or "to bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees" or these lines from the final stanza: 

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

I've nothing to add to that! 

Autumn Amble

The warm and weighty air we've enjoyed lately has camouflaged what's been going on close to the ground, where low branches have been thinning and yellowing. Where crimson and yellow leaves have mixed in with the green.  

 It was if the scenery had been clued into the equinox, which in a way it had, I suppose. A woods that looked summery just a few days ago seemed to morph overnight into an autumnal landscape. 

I noticed this yesterday on my post-farmers-market stroll, a lovely routine that my newly freed up work status has allowed me to enjoy. The woods near there has a blend of trees and enough underbrush that turns early in the season to burnish the place with gold, to stamp it with the season. 

But up above, there is still plenty of green. Time for many more autumn ambles.