Leaves. There are so many of them. Piles and piles of them. Each one is singular. Yellow, red, orange, parchment-they sail down in autumn air like fearless skydivers. They are so trusting, letting go completely. They do not question as I do: Will it be safe?
There are the fall seasons in our lives. When we shed the past like the trees shed their leaves, the old just drops away. When we embrace this as a natural time of release, we will come to feel the freedom and the rightness of it.
— Gunilla Norris, Author of “Embracing the Seasons” (1939-)
It was another early morning when I slipped out to the porch. In the distance there was a light fog on the lake and a haziness hanging in the air. The temperature was around 65 degrees and very pleasant. The day before Sam did some weed-eating around the flower bed and had moved Wilhelmina’s Boston fern, the one she had taken up as her new hiding place. Wilhelmina stretched just a bit and headed toward the fern. She couldn’t quite find her way under the fern. Finally, she did. She thinks she’s hidden even though her little head is showing.
The four hummingbird feeders needed refilling even though on that cool morning there were no hummingbirds feeding. By mid-morning there was one hummer. I wondered if perhaps they had begun their southern migration and left this one behind. The straggler seems quite content to dip into one feeder after another and then back again.
It was time to fill the songbird feeders. I slipped back through the house and out the door onto the back porch so Wilhelmina wouldn’t follow me and scare away the birds. As I stepped out, I spotted a beautiful bird standing on the floating dock at the pond. It looked like a Great Blue heron, but its wings were a deep dark brown. It jumped off the dock and began to swim in circles around the pond. It showed no sign of fishing, nor did it pay any attention to me. The bird would slap his large wings on the surface of the water as if it was enjoying itself. The bird hopped back on the dock, flapped its wings and flew away. I was smitten with the unusual bird but carried on with filling the bird feeders for the songbirds that awaited me.
There were flowers down by the mailbox that would need watering, so I enticed Wilhelmina to walk with me. Every few steps she would rollover in the dust; then catch up with me again. There were also sticks to pick up along the way. From the storms we’ll be picking up limbs and sticks for a long time. There were also bodock balls on the ground having fallen from the trees. I always pick up the fruit for use in fall decorations. The fruit of the bodock is lime green in color and the size of a softball. They make for a nice arrangement beside orange pumpkins and fallen leaves. The gifts of nature are a generous and awesome sight.
Shannon Bardwell is a writer living quietly in the Prairie. Email reaches her at [email protected].
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