Yellow Carpet Treatment

All of a sudden, overnight, the ceiling has become the floor.

I found myself astonished the way I am by snow – a sudden transformation in great sweeps of colour. Overnight rain brought leaves down in their thousands, and because there was almost no wind they came straight down, falling quietly and settling one on top of another until all the grass and tarmac disappeared and every inch under the trees was carpeted. This –

became this –

Under the lime trees I was treading on a multi coloured carpet of every kind of yellow and gold, merging into a glow of russet red under the copper beech.

Every leaf is a small marvel. I crouched down to explore more closely and then glanced up to see this –

What more to say? I walked around everywhere smiling, up banks and over lawns normally slippery with mud and wet grass, feeling soft leathery leaves under my feet. No paths visible – just great swathes of colour, undulating waves of copper and gold.

Tomorrow the yellow will have faded a little, and the next day more, and the gold will lose its glow; but because I was there today I saw it, and was amazed.

Colour Catcher

Every day a little more colour.

Every moment, change – clouds part suddenly and then close in again; the afternoon draws in. The hour before dusk is a slow gathering of shadows and a ripening of glowing colour.

I soak it all in. I stand about under the trees and look up, head back, gazing up through the canopy and the next moment I’m crouching down, with leaves rustling like paper bags and the smell of damp earth under me.

Closer and closer. To get lost in it all, to forget everything else and sink into this colour, this hour, this moment that will never come again.

Fall they will. But not quite yet…

There should be another name for the season we are in. It’s no longer summer, and it isn’t autumn – something liminal, poised between two states and held waiting in a delicate balancing act of cool misty mornings and golden afternoons.

There won’t be many days like this, so I love them all the more.

Layers

The weather has turned colder, and the leaves are falling faster now, on pavements and streets, on lawns and pathways. They pile up, leaf on leaf, layering into carpets and swept by the wind into piles that are sometimes mysteriously neat and oddly placed. My neighbour has a perfectly arranged doormat of brown and golden leaves positioned precisely outside her back gate, the edges as cleanly defined as if a sweeper had cleared the pavement and carefully neatened and flattened the pile.

In the garage a peacock butterfly is hibernating, wings tightly folded, clinging motionless to the ceiling. In the garden the snails that I watched all summer and into the autumn have finally disappeared, and the hedgehog who trundled past every evening on his nightly expedition, appearing at almost exactly the same time like a regular commuter on his way to work, has also turned in for the winter. I have left piles of leaves and sticks wherever I can for the many small creatures that I know will be taking shelter over the coming months, and now whenever I go outside I pile on layers of clothing, some days more, some days less.

In our different ways, we are all preparing for winter.