Autumn Garden

As the snow flies in and covers the ground, I am thankful for these last images of Autumn. I got one last day to capture the various bits of what remains in the garden. The next day the snow came and changed the color of everything, finally drenching the last splashes of the bright shades in the purple cabbage and green vinca. Fleeting, for it only caught my attention for a day, now gone until next season.


There was one last twirl of the buds on this browned bush, lined up in the wind like a row of ballet dancers...


The vinca vines peek out through the brown leaves...


still poking its head up, greening in the sun...


The echinacea never loses it grace...


And the chimnea continues to provide warmth in these days. That and a means to joyfully clean up all the branches dropped by a 90-year old elm tree...


Like a prayer to the dying warmth of the sun, the colors of the Autumn garden seek to hold on to their fading colors, before the blanket of snow that will stay with me for several more months.

Namaste,
lotus

Lion in the Sun

The sun shone one more time on
the accoutrements of the autumn garden
the lion sits, basking in the fading warmth of the sun's low angle



the cabbage unfurls layers and layers of purple flesh



taking one last bow, the skirts flared wide over the ground full of brown leaves.



The beauty of the autumn garden
lies beneath the discarded foliage of the neighborhood


and hanging in abundance on the vines,
awaiting the arrival of a great gang of birds
hungry and wanting.

Autumn reds

After all the leaves have withered and fallen to the ground, the color of the red berries fill the sides of a dirt road. So easy to pick in comparison to the thorn-protected blackberries, yet so not edible.

november changes

Now that all the leaves are gone and the region shades itself with browns and grays, I think about how so much can change in just one week...from the oak reds...

...to the golden beauty of the maples...

I'm reading Ellen Meloy's The Anthropology of Turquoise and in it, she explores how the body experiences color and constructs a connection to home; "Color is the first principle of Place." Color intoxicates the senses, makes suggestions to the nose, imprints upon memory, invokes emotion, beckons the touch, and fills the heart.

Here, I am surrounded by all manner of color: a riot of reds, browns, greens, yellows. The land where I choose to live is the full spectrum of nature's creation. Each season brings on a fresh palette of color...

....and soon, this will blanket the earth...