It is truly fall around here. The leaves show several kinds of beauty. Of course, there is the sort that we always hear about: the shades of colors, highlighted by the pines' steady green. But because the last few days have been especially calm, there has been little or no wind to disturb the falling and patterns.
As we walked around the neighborhood today, several lovely circles of leaves had been laid down around their tree trunks. One circle mysteriously showed mostly yellow leaves on one side and most bright red leaves on the opposite side. Walking around, there was a continuous falling of a few leaves here and a few leaves from that tree over there, all in silence and easy to miss if we weren't alert. The circles are very well laid out, not irregular in height or depth of leaves. The trees and their leaves could not have done a more impressive job laying everything out evenly, with different angles to a fallen leaf and happenstances giving an effect of both thoughtfulness and eye-catching geometry.
A black driveway under pines often shows terrific beauty. I like to look at a nice, natural scattering and picture being handed a big basket of leaves and asked to place them as beautifully and as separately as they have fallen by themselves. It is somewhat like looking at a Christmas tree that has been nicely decorated so that lights are spread over the surface evenly but knowing all the while that the pleasant geometry and spacing is completely natural.
The sun rises later these days and that makes it easier to catch the moments when a particular tree is simply ablaze in full sunlight, glowing a fiery orange with special but only momentary intensity.
