Cherry picking autumn weather

One of my favorite trees for autumn color is now the black cherry (Prunus serotina). This year the color on the tree in the picture below isn't as strong, perhaps because of the drought this past summer, but the flaming branches are still attention arresting.

Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

Photo by J. Harrington

Much of yesterday was spent clearing cartloads of oak leaves and pine needles from the drive. We’ll see if a similar effort is needed before the snow falls. Meanwhile, we intend to enjoy our warm autumn for as long as it lasts. Lasting snow that arrives just in time to give us a white Christmas is fine with me. (The Daughter Person gets nervous if there’s no snow on the ground for her birthday early in December.)

We’ve not had a frost yet in our area. That may arrive late this week. Soon it will be time to plug in the heated birdbath. If we get a warm spell after the first killing freeze, which may or may not happen this week, we’ll enjoy an Indian Summer. This winter may bring a (weak?) La Niña event, which may, or may not, mean anything, since it will be competing with our trend to milder winters in Minnesota. Sigh! Perhaps we’ll just have to learn to live life one day at a time.

Leaves

Lloyd Schwartz - 1941-

                        1 

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary
to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded
by leaves turning; it's not just the symbolism,
to confront in the death of the year your death,
one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony 
isn't lost on you that nature is most seductive
when it's about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its 
incipient exit, an ending that at least so far 
the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)
have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe
is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception
because of course nature is always renewing itself—
        the trees don't die, they just pretend,
        go out in style, and return in style: a new style.





                        2 

Is it deliberate how far they make you go
especially if you live in the city to get far 
enough away from home to see not just trees 
but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high 
speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were 
in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves:
so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks 
like rain, or snow, but it's probably just clouds
(too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder, 
given the poverty of your memory, which road had the 
most color last year, but it doesn't matter since 
you're probably too late anyway, or too early—
        whichever road you take will be the wrong one
        and you've probably come all this way for nothing.






                        3 

You'll be driving along depressed when suddenly
a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through
and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably
won't last. But for a moment the whole world
comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—
red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,
gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations
of burning. You're on fire. Your eyes are on fire.
It won't last, you don't want it to last. You 
can't stand any more. But you don't want it to stop. 
It's what you've come for. It's what you'll
come back for. It won't stay with you, but you'll 
        remember that it felt like nothing else you've felt
        or something you've felt that also didn't last.

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