message in a bottle

yesterday, i bought this tiny-but-tall bottle for a dollar at a goodwill store. a matching one in my kitchen is filled with dried orange peel. even if there hadn't been a mysterious folded paper inside, i still would have bought it - for lemon peel, and a matching set!

this morning, i fished the paper out and read it. and i've been thinking about the message ever since...  well done, perfect stranger.

(and you, reader, will need to click on the picture to see it for yourself.)

now, brown

driving the long way last evening, marvelling at the browns and russets and golds of the late october landscape. more rain, wind, and cold will drop these remaining leaves to the ground very soon. right now, though, late fall is still distracting enough to make me pull over to the side of the road for a while.

autumn 2014: postscript

red sunrise early this morning confirms what the forecast says: storms are coming and it's going to rain. this rain will quickly end our foliage season for good.

already, the end has begun, though. driving the back roads, leaves surge wildly through the air as the car passes through tunnels of trees. when i walk in the morning, i try to catch one before it hits the ground - for good luck, as told to me by savvy six year-olds. there have been several half-hearted attempts at raking, mostly just to make piles to jump into, throwing leaves into the air, and shrieking. but the heavy duty raking will be next weekend, after this rain, after all the maple and oak and birch leaves are down and the trees are winter bare.

my newest interesting word: abscission. the botanical term for leaves and other parts falling from a plant. it's what happens to deciduous trees in the fall. who knew there was such a fancy word for such a bittersweet ending?

autumn 2014

there's no better place to live in the fall than in new england. it's been beautiful here - although difficult for me to capture with the camera. i think i've been more content to just gaze and marvel at the beauty around me. today, it actually moved me to tears a bit - and that surprised me, a lot!