Happy 1st day of Fall to all of you! It is a beautiful autumn day–clear blue sky, bright sunshine, cool temperature, and a tapestry of orange, red, yellow and green leaves. It is the season for picking apples, making apple butter, drinking apple cider, choosing pumpkins, carving jack-o-lanterns, raking leaves, and running through a corn maze. It is harvest time for the farmers, closing time for the cabins and camps that have housed a summer of delightful fun, and hunting time for those who carry a bow or gun for sport or to put food on the table.
Over the weekend, our yard was a wildlife paradise of sorts, as the deer grazed through the delectable offerings one evening and the posse of almost fully grown turkeys swept through the yard at midday with flapping wings and watchful eyes.
The sumac is in all its glory–the understory to yellow-leaved ash and poplars.
We met up with Aaron at St. John’s Arboretum yesterday for a spectacular walk through the woods. The maple leaves glowed against the dark trunks and branches on trees so lofty it took my breath away.
Fallen leaves lined the path through the woods and decorated the ferns and wood nettles with bright spots of color.
Fall is the between season. Most of us do not want to see the end of summer as we wonder how it could have slipped away so quickly. And we regret that things we wanted to do were left undone. Some of us are beginning the dread of winter–few in Minnesota complain that winter isn’t long enough! But in between those wishes to go back to the warmth and the not wanting to go forward to the bitter cold is this cool spot in the timeline. We may end the season of Fall in a blanket of snow, but the beginning is spectacular, and we have many weeks before us of warm days, cool nights, great color, and autumn treasures. Enjoy!
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