Autumn

Took a short walk at Mom and Dad's yesterday, right around sunset. It had rained - a nice, solid, autumn rain - and there was a vivid orange blanket of leaves, lying soft on the ground. The trunks of the trees were black and wet in contrast, lending to the the impression of some calendar photograph: a scene from a Japanese garden, or an illustration alongside a Robert Frost poem.

Definitely inspired some meditation. I stood there, wishing I could carry back the scene, the moment, to my father, who loved to ride down these trails, pointing out blackberries to my mother in the summer, watching for deer in the fall. He would have stopped here, too, I think, and said to my mother, "Well, would you look at that..."

Trees

I've always loved trees. Whenever I get a chance, I like to wander through our woods, and I'm always trying to identify the trees I see.

This week I found elm trees, sugar and silver maples, some large ash trees back behind the house, and discovered that two of the trees growing beside the old shed are a hackberry and a box elder. That poor box elder, it's right by the shed door, and I used to cut it down close to the ground, every summer. It kept coming back, and after letting it go one summer (or two?), I no longer have the heart to kill it; it's a "real" tree, now, and I have a climbing rose that has clambered up through the lower branches and bloomed out for the first time. Don't know what we'll do when it finally blocks that door...but I have a feeling that the tree will be around longer than the shed.



The locust trees have been in full bloom, and now the white petals are starting to float down into the garden whenever the wind blows.

This spring has been cool and wet, giving everything a chance to recover from last year's drought. We also didn't have another late freeze. Blossoms survived, and it looks like we will have nuts and fruit this fall.

I really need to start carrying my camera and a tree book. Wouldn't hurt to have binoculars, for those hard to spot leaves and flowers, twenty or thirty feet above me!

I do have some photos from previous walks. I think I'll start posting them here, it would be a neat way to keep track of them.