Lovely Lovely Leaves

In the deep fall
don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind?

~Mary Oliver, Song for Autumn

It’ll be at least another month before the Big Leaf Maples surrounding our house drop their leaves. Until then, we’ll make good use of the golden beauties from the pair of red buds on the side of our house. At least I thought we would…

As I raked these radiant leaves into a pile on this glorious sunny day, I had visions of staging a little photo shoot and capturing brilliant photos of the kids enjoying Autumn’s splendor. They tried, they really did… but the sad little pile I raked up doesn’t begin to compare to the mountains of dried brown Big Leaf Maple leaves we’ll soon see. They each made a few runs into the pile, hoping to create that feeling of being enveloped in the leaves…. It wasn’t happening. Still, we had fun trying and now they remember what we have to look forward to when the Maple leaves start falling.