AHHH-H-H-H…LEAVES!

Leaves!

I'll probably be seeing them in my sleep for the next week. Why? Because I spent most of yesterday raking leaves and piling them into waist-high rows. Then I loaded those leaf-mountains—one wheelbarrow-size portion at a time—and trucked them around the cottage to my make-shift compost dump, which is really just a narrow space between the base of the hill below the road and several piles of topsoil I had dropped off to use for landscaping. There, the leaves can spend the next few months breaking down without the wind blowing them around or me looking at them—and next spring I'll add them to the dirt and use the enriched mixture when planting or for top-dressing.

About midday, when I had the rows raked but before I'd begun the wheelbarrowing, I took a short break. From the perspective of the deck rocker, where I sat sipping from a bottle of water after washing down a couple of Tylenol for my aching back, I decided the long leaf piles resembled a range of small mountains—possibly the Big Snowbirds down in North Carolina, or the Cumberlands in eastern Kentucky.

Leaves!

There's no shortage of leaves to deal with or not, as you wish, when you have almost an acre of ground that's mostly in trees—and big trees, at that. Trees in the 50–100 foot high range. Sycamore and hackberry, box elder, basswood, walnut, elm, to name a few. The largest sycamore is easily five feet in diameter; a big tree that produces big leaves and lots of 'em.

I've never worn out a rake…but it might happen here, providing I don't wear out first.

When the pain meds kicked in, I ended my break and began moving the mountainous leaf piles around to the composting cul-de-sac. We're talking maybe 50 wheelbarrow-loads here…and when I finally called it a day around 4:30 p.m., the hauling part of the job was only half done. Today's work is visible through my window even as I write.

However, that's not the whole story. The way the cottage is situated, the 300-foot stretch of river just beyond my great-room windows is what I consider my front yard. No leaves to rake and haul there! To the rear of the cottage is a parking area, and the drive leading down from the road. This steep, 50-x-300 foot section of hillside, between the road above and the level land where the cottage sits, is covered with trees and various bushes. I never do anything with all those leaves, preferring the au naturale shaggy, woodsy look.

But…and this is the the kicker…the cottage sits about midway on the bank-frontage portion of the property. Therefore, I have both an upstream and downstream side-yard. Yesterday, I worked in the lower side-yard only. I've not even begun to rake or pile, let alone haul, leaves from the other yard! And probably won't get around to that one until later in the week—providing the weather holds.

Leaves!

So common and unobtrusive we take them for granted. They seem so simple. Yet mankind has never managed anything half so marvelous. Through the process of photosynthesis, using the chlorophyll that gives a leaf its green color, a leaf converts sunlight into energy, adds water and carbon dioxide, and forms the various sugars and starches which feed the plant. As a byproduct of this magical manufacturing, the leaf exhales water vapor and oxygen. How cool is that!

At summer's end, with reproduction duties and growth over for the year, a plant begins storing it's energy reserves in the lower stem and roots, preparing for that long winter's nap. Days shorten; sunlight wanes. Chlorophyll regeneration slows, then halts. No more green. The leaf changes color—or rather, it reveals its true colors—the carotenoids and anthocyains which color leaves in scarlet and burgundy, crimson and rosé, orange, yellow, gold, lemon, russet, tan, bronze, amethyst, and dozens of shades in-between. That breathtaking autumnal patchwork we oooh and ahhh over come fall. One final show, just for us, courtesy of that lovely little leaf. How many manmade factories look that good after they've shut down production?

Of course, not all leaves turn color and fall off in autumn; many, such as holly, periwinkle, mountain laurel, stay green all year.

Then there are trees which seem to drop their leaves reluctantly—oaks being high on this stubborn-minded list. Even in the midst of February's whipping winter winds, you can usually find an old oak still hanging onto many of its leaves, though they're by then looking an ugly brown and decidedly tattered.

My big elm kept most of its bright yellow leaves until last Wednesday, when for whatever, it decided to drop them over a matter of hours—a gold cascade that I found both thrilling and sad. But my weeping willow hasn't yet taken that final step—in fact, its narrow leaves are still more green than yellow. They looked so marvelous against yesterday's blue sky that theirs was the only portrait I made.

An artistic moment between bouts of landscaping labor. Rake, rake, pile, load, haul, dump, rake some more. As I said, I'll likely being seeing leaves in my sleep for the next week.

Ahhh-h-h-h…leaves!

DRIFTING LEAVES, QUACKING DUCKS, AND C-C-C-C-COLD!

It's been a cold, damp, cold, dark, cold, rainy day here along the river.

Cold, too.

There's an old country saying that autumn goes slipping down the river. The truth of this was visibly evident every time the wind blew, which instantly sent a pile of lemon-yellow boxelder leaves pouring onto the water, as if some profligate pirate were suddenly seized by the desire to hurl away a fortune in gold doubloons.

The newly-freed boxelder leaves would join the occasional maple, hackberry, and sycamore, all of them in their various hues bobbing along upon the slow-moving current like autumnal confetti. This wasn't the main leaf-fall that gives the season its name—but a good precursor of things to come…and possibly sooner than we expect if the weather continues to deteriorate.

I did mention it was cold, right?

Okay, so maybe you folks in Canada and Minnesota and North Dakota don't consider 43F degrees cold. Well, neither do we Ohioans, usually. But confound it, it sure felt cold here today. I huddled at my desk, electric heater on HIGH, yet shivering still, chilled to the bones and feeling a lot like Bob Cratchit trying to keep warm with a single lump of coal in Scrooge's counting house.

The cold—or more likely the steady light drizzle—discourage feeder visitors, too. Only the chickadees, nuthatches, and titmice seemed unaffected. The squirrels stayed inside their snug hollow in the big sycamore near the drive. With the bunch of 'em nestled cozily together, all in their nice fur robes, I bet they were toasty.

I wasn't. I was COLD!

Just before the rain came I went out and tossed the ducks a second scoop of cracked corn. I'd given them one early on, soon after daylight, in hopes of keeping them from quacking like dependent fools and waking the neighbors. A duck could get shot for such behavior hereabouts.

Have to told you I've been feeding those two white ducks who came floating dowstream like wandering featherdusters a couple of months back? [post]

Well, I have, and I can assure you that while ducks may not be the smartest birds to ever waddle up from the sandbar, they're easily the loudest. And like any good bum on the lam, they never forget the source of a free meal. All I have to do is step out onto the deck, say "Hey, ducks!" in anything above a whisper, and they come bleating and quacking from a hundred yards away, like sheep with outboard motors strapped to their butts. I swear they displace wakes that threaten to wash out the bank!

Anyway, the winds blew, the leaves came sifting onto the water, and a portion of autumn went slipping down the river…apparently taking every BTU of available heat with it. But the ducks stayed. And the rains came.

AND IT'S STILL COLD!

WAITING AND WATCHING

When I stepped outside this morning, it was chilly and damp, the sky thick with clouds and a feeling of rain in the air. Yet when I walked around the cottage and glanced at the sky, a barely waning Harvest Moon was just setting into the trees…and for a moment I thought the predicted rain might not materialize.

The river was quite in the dim light, even in the riffle—though maybe I'm so used to its murmur that I failed to hear it whispering over the rocks. Fog hung above the pools and swirled in the shadows. The bankside vegetation still looked mostly green, though now with a yellowish cast, as if summer's dose of chlorophyll in leaves and stems had finally gotten the message to cease and desist, and allow autumn to don its own warm hues.

From upstream came the honking of approaching geese—not migratory birds, but rather a few of the Canadas who often spend the night on one of the nearby ponds. The big birds passed directly overhead…and as I watched them cleave the air just above the tall sycamores, I noticed the sky had again been hidden behind a mottled scrim of clouds and fog.

I'd intended on making a foray afield to check on the seasonal progress and do a bit of photography at several locations a short drive from the cottage. The soft, flat light of such a day is especially good for photographing autumn leaf color, though I realize that may sound counterintuitive. Here along the river, there are practically no reds at the moment—not even on the usually blazing sumac or Virginia creeper; their leaves are either still green, or else sport various shades of yellow and orange.

I had to look long and hard to find anything red—and even those few I located were muted and not anything to compare with a showy swamp maple. Frankly, I'm not sure if it's just a slow season hereabouts for the bright colors to materialize with their knockout hues, or if if it's simply going to turn into one of those ho-hum years in which the show fizzles before it really begins. Only time will tell…

I was watching a handful of brown boxelder leaves drift slowly downstream when the first of the rain began. A drip here, a patter or two there, then a cold wet drop on the end of my nose. The thought of a cheery hearthfire sounded like a fine alternative for waiting out the morning and seeing what options the afternoon might deliver.

You can't hurry autumn any more than you can spring. The leaves will turn in their own time, just as the violets ignore all our advice and pleading as to when to bloom. Mankind, for all his bluster and meddling, has yet to tell a goose that it's time to head south, or a swamp maple that now's the moment to put on its bright scarlet cloak. The hummingbirds are long gone without our council. The groundhog has prepared his winter den and is busily fattening up for the season of cold he knows in his bones will soon enough arrive…and never once though of confirming this notion with anyone.

I like that. It gives me great comfort to know I'm not in charge—but merely allowed to stand and look…and marvel at all I witness.