The Edge of Fall Color

Some of the trees at the Homestead have let their leaves go without first shouting out in red, orange or yellow. Fall color, like the amount of snowfall in winter, is quite variable in the realm of memory. And in these weeks, fall color is part of our local conversation along with the draught and the long string of sunny days we’ve had in Pennsylvania.

I find a few beautiful leaves are mostly what I need in the fall and I’ve enjoyed looking for them. On our morning walks I’ve been keeping an eye on the sumac as it mixes red leaves with its deep green ones.

As I make my way back and forth to 151 multiple times a day, I gaze about for color and am often stopped by one leaf or another.

Of course that commute includes Hickory, standing tall at mid-point. The reach of the “hands” to the sky looks so different in the fall than it did in the spring.

The light makes the yellow, brown and green mix of the hickory leaves so lovely especially when I look close in.

Even in the midst of my work this past week I’ve been stopped by the singular beauty created by a leaf dropping in on my project du jour.

I thank Tessa Bielecki and her recent post in The Desert Foundation for the Wendell Berry Sabbath poem verse I’ll include below.

May your looking invite your praise.

Love and Peace, Glenn

In fall their brightened leaves, released,
Fly down the wind and we are pleased
To walk on radiance, amazed.
O light come down to earth, be praised!
--Wendell Berry, This Day, 1986, I