Fallen Down

Yesterday morning I went outside to go to work and I couldn’t find my car! Now, this is a bright blue, little peanut of a car, but still… bigger than me, so it shouldn’t go missing, right?

After that instantaneous jolt of adrenaline I realized… there it was! Right there in front of me… but it was camouflaged! I could barely see it through all of the leaves that had fallen upon and around it. Overnight! I went into the house Tuesday evening and my tree had leaves with maybe a dozen or so on the ground. I came out Wednesday morning and I could see the sky through the branches and my car was buried in leaves.

What happened to cause my sad tree to just toss her leaves off all at once like that? To say it was a little odd is just an understatement. There wasn’t any wind, really, and only a light rain that evening. Apparently it was enough to cause the majority of leaves to fall that night, enveloping our cars and driveway and sidewalk and yard in golden, crunchy goodness.

My trees on fire have melted. The yards (of those non-OCD homeowners) are now a sea of colors, mixed with the green of the grasses that haven’t gone dormant yet. I miss them in the trees, but it’s a different sort of pretty on the ground. Waves of gold leaves flow into trickles of burgundy and reds. Again, I’m at a loss because I have not been carrying my camera. How dare I! But I have, at least, taken the time to notice… to breathe in the fall air and deliberately alter my walking path to crunch some leaves along the way.

It has been a beautiful, breathtaking, colorful fall this year, even now that the leaves have fallen down.