Leaf watching season is here! Leaves were coming down throughout the beautiful, temperate fall day. Mostly gold and brown from the tulip poplars, but I ran through one patch of red maple leaves on the path. Later, out for a little walk to investigate some day-long construction noise, I watched a leaf fall. It drifted toward me, and I reached out and caught it. It was crisp and crackly.
In the afternoon, I went to sit on the back deck and read. The deck is off of the 2nd story, so it looks out over the trees that line the yard, about 10 feet up in the branches. I had just sat down when a black squirrel appeared, moving along an improvised highway of tree branches - running out to the top of a branch and then climbing or jumping to the tip of a branch on the next tree. When it came near a large oak tree, it leapt off a tiny hemlock branch onto the trunk, climbed up the tree a few feet and around to the other side, then leapt off into another hemlock branch and continued on.
Soon, another squirrel came by, following a similar path, though different in detail. At the oak, it climbed higher up the trunk and sat for a while on the stub of a dead branch. The black squirrel came back through the branches, this time with a nut in its mouth. It once again used the large oak trunk to move past, and then vanished out of sight in the tree-filled corner of the yard.
Sunlight is streaming through the oaks and tulip poplars, whose leaves seem to glow with the light. Some rays get through to light the spotted acuba leaves that surround the base of the large trees.
Another practically perfect autumn day!
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