The flowers may be dying...

...but the determined hippy can still find the makings of a bouquet.

'Tis the season

I generally watch two places when I'm out on my beloved walking trail: the foliage and trees, and the ground. The former offers a constantly changing backdrop to the walk, depending on the season--now, the nuts and berries are showing themselves, and the Virginia creeper is turning a splendid red. And the ground is just a good place to keep an eye on whenever a person is upright, y'know?

However, since autumn is now here, I most frequently found myself keeping vigilance in another direction: up.

Let's just say my reason has something to do with a recent Traumatic Experience involving Eight-Legged Carnivores (so traumatic, indeed, that it warrants capital letters. Yeah, that bad; also, click that link at your own risk). No incidents this time, save a large buzzing insect that threatened to dive bomb into my head. I credit the lack of web ensnarement tonight to my constant vigilance.

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Now playing: Shinedown - Heroes (Album Version)
via FoxyTunes

Lazy day

Not much to say today. Here's a picture of a pretty autumn tree instead, taken at a few weeks ago on campus.


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Now playing: Thursday - Steps Ascending
via FoxyTunes

Diving in

Most people have two sets of grandparents; I was fortunate to have three sets, the extra one acquired not by remarriage but by proximity.

When I was about 9 years old, my family moved from one end of our block to the other; the move, though hardly remarkable in distance, was a vast improvement over the lower-income, high vacancy rental section we previously lived in. The end of the block we moved to was more stable, for the most part, comprised of retired couples who had lived in their homes for well over 30 years.

Our next door neighbors introduced themselves to us well before we even moved into the house; they fussed over both me and my deceptively cute two-year-old sister. They only had one grandson, and they looked forward to having two little girls to spoil. They loved seeing us play out in the yard, acting out small dramas and picking flowers and later playing with our cats. Even if our parents hadn't raised the two of us to be courteous to our elders, I don't think we could have done anything that wasn't precious. They encouraged us to come over anytime, and we did; my sister would frequently go over to swing with the wife on their front porch, sitting on her lap and practically melting in her arms.

The coolest thing they ever did, though, is probably part of why autumn is my favorite season. Because the neighborhood was an older one, many of the trees were massive; three such massive trees were in the stretch of front lawn our homes shared. The husband one fall brought out his leaf blower--not to clear the lawn of all the fallen leaves, but to condense them into one central pile. After doing so, they invited us to come over and play in it.

Know the joy of crunching through a build-up of crispy, crunchy leaves? Multiply that at least tenfold in order to understand the excitement of flinging yourself bodily into a huge pile of leaves, laughing with abandon, and heaving yourself out from underneath them to do it all over again. It's a full sensory experience--the feel of crackling leaves, the smell of them in the crisp air, the chilly nip that you only feel when you pause long enough to register the mild discomfort, the sight of the sky filtered through leaves above you and bare branches further above... There's nothing like it in the world.

It's one of my top favorite memories of childhood.

My favorite time of year

September 22 means the official beginning of my favorite season: autumn. Even its very name sounds lovely, I think, suggesting a pensive maturity to the year. (Let's not even acknowledge its shorter, less-elegant sounding alias.)

I could write a whole new post about what it means to me, but I did so last year in a post that may not have generated any feedback but pleased me. Instead, a couple/few goals:

- Get out more to play in the leaves.
- Get out more, period. Gotta get back into that grading groove and get it out of the way. There are places I haven't explored in their full autumnal splendor.
- Get moving on grad school apps. (Slightly daunting)

And for the more immediate time:
- Get to bed. Long day tomorrow, long week ahead.

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Now playing: Modest Mouse - Satin in a Coffin
via FoxyTunes

Last shots of autumn

I took a 20-minute break from grading earlier this week to go outdoors. After all, autumn won't last forever. Camera in hand, I decided to see what interesting things the yard held in store.

It started at the deck, actually. The leaves are accumulating. If we leave the back door open in the evening, sometimes the wind whips them up against the screen. And sometimes they scratch across the deck, an almost crunching sound, which when combined with the creaks of a settling patio, can be disconcerting. But the leaves looked pretty harmless in the halflight. The great thing about being digital is that I can take pictures just for kicks, just to play with the angles or the content. Those pictures tickle my fancy, but there's nothing spectacular in the composition.

Onward, then. This is what I eventually found:

This is a... shrub of sorts. Dunno what it's called, but it's got pretty little pink flowers in the spring.

Most of the leaves are gone now. I'm a sucker for silhouettes and sunsets, so here ya go.

OK, so I actually took this one a few weeks ago. It was an accident, actually. The shot I was trying to capture was...

Ah, the benefits of actually using the flash on a grey, gloomy day.

And that may be all the pictures I take in a while. I appear to have murdered my camera, or at least critically injured it in a steep topple onto a hard surface (blasted concrete...). It now works about every other time I try to use it and sometimes refuses to read the memory card (problem's the camera, not the card--computer reads it just fine). Could be the impetus I need to get a better camera.

Adding up the signs

A few weeks ago, I started noticing fallen leaves in the grass. The spiders also returned, spinning large webs that make venturing out onto the deck at night a dangerous prospect. Autumn, I realized, was on its way. Recently, the heat's started giving way to crisp, almost chilly mornings. When I tread through the grass in the morning on campus, my feet (still in summer's flip-flops) get wet from the dew, and the chill is enough to make me consider the possibility of pulling out more "practical" footwear, or at least, consider walking on the designated paths.

The calendar may not say so, but I think autumn is here. I can never decide which is my favorite season--autumn, or spring? During spring, I enjoy the emerging green and the flowers, and the promise of summer and its break. But fall is more suited to my temperament, I think. A friend once said that autumn was great for curling up with some Poe. I knew exactly what she meant. It's deliciously melancholy--just enough to indulge in, but not as depressing as the extended bleakness of winter. There's just a sense of things coming to an end--leaves, flowers, the year itself. It's fun to go crunching through the leaves, but the barren tree branches are a reminder that their once glorious splendor of green, then yellow or red or purple, has passed. Right before the first true freeze, the leaves start to turn to rot under the faintly grey-tinged sky. It's sort of shiver-inducing, when you stop to think about it.

And what better to ward off the shivers than a hot cup of tea? I'm quite partial to coffee, true, but evenings are for tea. I love drinking out of clear mugs, all the better to see the shades of red or amber, depending on the tea. Right now, I'm keen on a blend of black currants and vanilla, a beautiful vermilion in the cup nestled in my hands. Through the open window, I can hear the crickets chirping and the whoosh of passing traffic. A bit of a breeze blows through the still-mostly-clad trees, rustling the leaves. The temperature is just a smidge on the cool side, but it's a comfortable cool, not bracing like air conditioning, and the tea helps warm me. It's pretty peaceful, and right now, so am I.

Yep, I'm pretty sure it's autumn.