Autumn has come to Margaret’s Woods: to the sawhorse and the stump, the tangled beds of hayscented fern and Japanese stiltgrass. The blood-colored Japanese barberry bushes are festooned with rows of scarlet berries and a scattering of fallen maple leaves impaled on their thorns. Feathered migrants learn the way to the best fruit from the early colors: wild gravevines are turning yellow, and the Virginia creepers are red flames against the pale trunks of white oaks. Hercules’-club trees are bowing under the weight of their monstrous purple heads, and their three-foot-long, triply-compound leaves fall nearly intact in the rush to bare their goods.
It’s a cool morning. A cranefly sits motionless on a blackberry leaf, too cold to fly. A pair of pileated woodpeckers, year-round residents too young to remember when this 100-acre deer-ravaged savanna was a mature forest, sun themselves at the top of an oak snag already dead when the loggers came through, one dry, beautiful autumn just like this. Their red crests blaze as they groom themselves, finding insect nourishment under their own black bark. This morning, a new autumn color — hunter’s orange — has entered the woods, and with luck, the first arrows will find their targets and water the parched ground with fresh blood.
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I watch the slideshow first, and I’m struck by the silence. Why I want some music with it, I don’t know. Then your post plays music.
I love the vivid imagery, particularly in the first paragraph. Here in Aotearoa, of course, we’re heading the other way — the clocks went forward an hour last night. (I’d have viewed the slideshow but this dialup connection’s just too sluggish).
Be careful in those woods while the hunters are there, Dave.
Right, that’s it – I’m on the next plane out. An intoxicating description of time & place.
Peter – Music, eh? I could always assemble one of those cheesy YouTube slideshows…
pohanginapete – You have daylight savings time down there, too? I’m sorry. Dreadful custom.
I actually thought of linking to a slideshow because I thought that might be a better approach for slow-modem readers than waiting for an image-laden post to load. Guess not!
Dick – Really? Thanks. You are, of course, welcome to stay here as long as you like, should you ever manage to cross the pond.