October 22 -October 26 Brilliant Leaves

2010-Usually peak is passed by now but this year it is late.  We are just in the midst of that series of days each one of which seems to be the most intensely colored until, unbelievably, the next day surpasses it.  The colors seem most set off by the absolute bluest of skies and then even more brilliant in contrast to the dark grey of clouds and wet black trunks.  The best part is the clear intense reds and yellows that hurt your eyes to see.  No, the best part is the subtle combinations of colors so mixed they haven’t names.  Cool air is the perfect environment until it warms and the scent of decaying leaves rises to complete an even more perfect whole.  The theme here is that when you think things are so good you can barely stand it, they get even better.
At the bird feeder;

Timid cardinal
Lurks scarlet in yellow leaves
Waiting for a turn.

2011-The deer are especially aggressive this year. They managed to get into the garden over the fence, ate all the beets and chard, generally trampled everything else and then tore the gate off on their way out.  They came back several times until C showed me  where they were getting in and I fixed it.  V has had deer damage for the first time ever and even M’s fenced-in property has been breached. I thought maybe they knew it was to be a hard winter and were stocking up, V thought maybe their usual things weren’t available because of the wet season, and C says that here are more aggressive males because of management practices, ie more lucrative licenses.  Whatever the reason, (not)for the first time I have a real sense of the power of the male animal (deer wise).
The colors seem to be fading without ever having really peaked. The ash in back and the maple in front are completely bare but the nectarine has all its green leaves, a few yellow among them.  The magnolia is still completely green, while the forsythia, in their second sparse blooming are just beginning to turn red and burgundy.
I have had a second visit by Praying Mantis. This one (same one?) climbed up to my face and waving its arms and moving its mouth parts seemed to have something important to say to me. Pumpkin visited in meditation and was very comforting.
2012- The colors this year! I don’t mind driving for a change because everything is so beautiful. Every oak seems to be creating its own painting. Dyeing yarn from plants this fall yielded a very similar palette which makes me feel a little like a god participating in the creation of this spectacle.
It’s time to plant garlic for next year. So, in the midst of watching this season fade away, I am planning and acting for a season yet to come. That in itself is enough to stave off some of the ‘winter dread’ I customarily feel around this time. But now there’s a chance I won’t be here to have this garden next year. I ask myself, what’s the point of planting? After a few days of sitting with that I’ve made up my mind to plant it anyway. Who would I be disconnected from that cycle? So the garlic will grow and be here to nourish whomever comes next.

October 16-21 The Glass is Half Empty

2010-There was an afternoon, a certain mix of cool air and warm sun, that made me think of spring.  I paid more attention and, with eyes closed to erase the vivid trees, could find no perceivable difference between this mellow fall afternoon and one in say, May.  Even the damp earth smell was the same.  Why was this so surprising?  It emphasized for me that there is no external difference; the vast felt difference must be entirely internal, emotional.  Spring feels the way it does because of the meaning we attach to it and the contrast between where we’ve been and where we are going.  Likewise fall, though sensually identical to a spring day, is steeped in loss and colored by what we know is passing away.  Half full or half empty is our own creation.
2011-Returned from a trip to Florida in heavy rain and found most trees already bare. Today, even in sunshine, the colors are the grey of bare branches, black of wet trunks and brownish green or yellow of the remaining leaves. The grass however is till emerald green and there has been no more frost.
Spiders eat spiders.  I see one of the fragile seeming, long legged corner dwellers has captured a fat black one that now hangs well wrapped in a web under my desk.  Drama under the furniture.
2012-Days are an even eleven hours-briefly. The colors are intense this year and when the sun just rises in the morning, it beams on the maples to the nw of the garden lighting them up til they shock. A spring like feeling again these days.