MID-NOVEMBER COLORS, MORNING SUN

It was a chilly, frosty morning this morning… the sun finally peeked thru the trees and lit up bits and pieces of the maple trees, Yule Tide, and the Pyracantha. The contrast with the leftover night and early morning shadows made me grab the camera and head outside. The leaves crunched under my feet, a couple birds scolded me for disturbing their space. The sun struggled with a couple clouds and the shifting of the leaves still on the trees across the street quickly changing the early morning glow on the leaves, colors changing by the second, it seems.

 

How lucky I feel to be able to live where I can see these things out my window… to be able to walk out in my yard and touch their beauty. It is easy to get lost in the sounds of daybreak, a dog barking for its breakfast down the street, dry leaves tapping on empty branches on their way to the ground. A flock of geese fly over somewhere in the distance hidden by the woods behind me. The Carolina wren scolds as I trespass into his territory. A squirrel rattles his way thru the pile of leaves blown under the bushes now devoid of their flowers by the heavy frost of the previous morning. A little cat peeks out from under a faded hydrangea, his tummy full, he begins to wash his whiskers. I hear the Redtail hawk off to the east way above the newly cut cornfield hunting for his breakfast. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by nature even though I am actually in the Town limits and only a mile away from the highway. The hum of traffic has not started yet – or maybe the breeze is blowing the sound away from my ears, for it is quiet enough to be miles out in the country.

I shuffle thru the fallen leaves amazed by the colors as I am every year… always amazed by the beauty around me, and think how lucky I am to live in a place with flowers almost all year long. I wonder if this will be a hard winter since we had 37 snowflakes go past my window a couple days ago. Didn’t anyone tell them this is only November? Did they get lost? Are they warning me of things to come? Of days, maybe even a few weeks of NO flowers? Looking around I can see huge amounts of berries starting to redden. Is that to make it easier for the birds to find them in the winter drab colors or to give us humans something bright to break the monotony of the dull winter landscape? Well, whatever, I will enjoy the beauty that is here today and be grateful I can see it and walk well enough to get out and photograph it.

I wish the people who gave me these plants were still here to see how big they have grown, how beautiful they are after all these years… and I think how their loves goes on in the beauty that lives outside my windows.