Last Autumn Colors

It was a bleak and frosty landscape that greeted us upon our return on Saturday from an over-exposure of our senses in France. But we seemed to have brought Paris’s cold, wintry weather with us to Kentucky.

While the peasants played bourgeoisie for a fortnight and autumn only starting to take a grip on France, in our absence our maison campagne was transformed to the simpler beauty of nature in late autumn. Sunday I went for a short walk.

The stands of White Ash trees surrounding the house turned bald and it now looks like Gulliver bombarded Lilliput land with wooden darts with spiky feathers. Their grey bark against a grey sky made them ghostly. But the twisted road to the house still looked welcoming and inviting with thick layers of leaves leading the eye and islands of autumn in an ocean of green and brown.

 

This could be some of the last autumn colors for the year because possible strong winds from Hurricane Sandy might reach us the next few days and clean the trees of leaves in preparation for winter. Luckily we came back 2 days before the mess that Sandy is creating with all the airports on the eastern side of the country closed. Paris airport was already a mess on Saturday morning due to striking airport workers.   

The road to the pond looked inviting but the breeze was cold and my hands were freezing. With more than 20 species of trees around the pond it probably would have been very colorful, but that’s for another day, another time.

But by just walking around the house there were enough splashes of color against the bleak sky to appreciate autumn.

And it felt good to stand on top of the hill again overlooking a freshly cut and baled field and my neighbors cows in the pasture. France was excellent, it will stay with us, but it’s also good to be back home again.

Tiny splashes of summer's colors still exist at the front porch. What’s up with David’s bust in the garden soil? It’s there by design. He stepped down. He is tired of being put on a pedestal all the time.