Deep into October, the first two nights of hard frost arriving Monday and Tuesday. Temperatures well down in the 20's, the world outside thickly frosted with white when daylight broke. Autumn color peaked two weeks ago in this northern corner of the Vermont -- since then the landscape has been slowly shifting to the mix of gray/brown/evergreen/touches of silver that reigns during the cold months.
The morning after the first cold frost, trees that had been stubbornly holding on to their leaves let go, slow cascades of color coming down, carpeting backroads in swaths of bright yellow, bright orange, dark red. Next day, they'd become more of the brown accumulation of dead leaves that piles up along roadsides here, some rising up to cartwheel in one direction or another with the wind. Since then, daytime temperatures have coasted up to more user-friendly levels, the afternoons awash in sunlight -- perfect days to get work done outdoors. Which has had me outside the house scraping, sanding, painting, occasionally dragging the mower out of the garage to get the final grass cutting of the year underway. I am nothing if not industrious when I finally get myself off my adorable keister and hop to it.
The remaining leaves have been coming down in fits -- October breezes shake many loose, leaving branches progressively more naked, creating patches of open sky. And that is a funny aspect of this time of the year -- the sense of the world opening up, more space for increasingly slanted sunlight to spill through, suddenly revealed views of countryside that had been hidden during the warm season.
Today, mid-afternoon: autumn insects make music in the grass, a light wind moves through bushes and the remaining leaves on trees. Apart from that, complete silence. Bits of milkweed fluff drift lazily through the air, their filaments shining in the sunlight, looking like feathery clusters of fibreoptics. Long clouds drift slowly above the mountains off to the north, hugging the horizon -- above, the sky spreads out, a clear, cloudless blue. A breeze comes and goes, sheets hanging on the clothesline billow and wave slowly.
The air has warmed enough to make jeans and a t-shirt possible for work outside, though the breeze is cool enough to raise goosebumps. As soon as the sun slides down behind the tops of the trees across the road, the temperature will drop. Autumn may back off during these sweet afternoons, but it reasserts itself as evening comes on.
Indian summer -- mid-October, northern Vermont.
España, te echo de menos
rws 10:58 AM [+]
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