Weekly Quick Collage: Summer Sweetness

Summer Sweetness

collage, 5.5 x 4.75

It's so bitter-sweet, saying goodbye to summer. While fall is truly glorious here, with perfect daytime temperatures, crisp, cool nights, and the riotous colors of the changing leaves, I can't help feeling a sense of loss, and a sadness that comes with knowing that winter is not far away.  Of course, this is the natural way of things, the cycles that are a part of the balance of seasons on Earth. Yet, it's difficult to reconcile myself to the coming darkness, cold, and seemingly colorless landscape. So I remind myself that the trees and plants are not dead, just taking a well-deserved restorative rest until spring, when they will burst forth with life again and continue to grow.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?
                                                                                                                  ~ John Steinbeck

Happy fall, everyone!

November Brown

Brown seems a fitting color for November.  Even the Kinneyconick Creek looks brown at this time of year, due to low water levels and sediment, though the water is actually very clear.

I build a cairn of brown stones to honor the spirits of this place...

 

and an altar on which to leave an offering.

So many shades of brown to be seen at this time of year... grey-brown logs, red-brown cedar clapboard, myriad shades of brown leaves covering the ground...

Brown leaves look like beautiful calligraphy written across a striking blue sky...

Yellow- and red-brown leaves in the creek...

The warm brown of newly-sanded logs...

... and the fall foliage of a single redwood tree...




To enjoy more gorgeous brown, go to Jennifer Coyne Qudeen's or Julie Booth's wonderful blogs; they will hook you up with all the links!  Hope you enjoy!  Happy Fall, everyone!

Fall Photos

Winter is almost here, and as I sit here thinking about Christmas shopping, it's hard to believe how quickly fall flew by. Before I even knew it, I was trying to pretend I wasn't watching the first gaggle (that's the right word for it, I swear!) of honking geese speeding their way south.  "Noooooo, come baaaaaack!" I called, looking pretty silly to anyone who might have witnessed my fruitless pleading. Luckily, I was in my car alone, feeling a bit sad that summer was ending, because close behind fall follows the cold, gray season we call winter.

The autumn season is notoriously beautiful here in Kentucky. Without summer's sticky humidity, the air seems to glow- a freshly-scrubbed crystal clear blue. Temperatures are perfect, and the still lush green grass contrasts with the bright golds, crimsons, and oranges of the changing leaves. The trees have actually been mostly bare and brown for two or three weeks now, which is quite a letdown after such a sumptuous feast for the eyes. Here are a few of my fall photos for your enjoyment- a little taste of my life in Kentucky.  Goodbye, fall...

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.   
~Rabindranath Tagore

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
~Albert Camus

  There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
~Henri Matisse

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
~Henry David Thoreau

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

 Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
~John Lubbock

 For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.
~Martin Luther

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
~George Santayana

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
~Anton Chekhov

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
~Wallace Stevens

In the depth of winter I learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
~Albert Camus





Alright, winter, I think I'm ready for you, now...

Golden

The trees have been especially colorful this year, putting on a spectacular farewell show. Yesterday, it rained- hard. What this means, for those of you who live in other climates, is that many of the beautiful leaves will be knocked to the ground; end of show. And this is what happened, sort of.

It rained and rained and rained, the skies gray, the colors blah. Suddenly, there was a break between storms. I grabbed my camera and ran outside, and here's the sight that greeted me. (These photos were not enhanced- these are the true colors that dazzled my eyes.)





Everything sparkled and shimmered.



The grass was covered with a yellow carpet. The trees glowed as if imbued with their own inner light.





The sunlight had turned the whole world...



golden.