Edging into Fall

The cornfields are now bare of their tall, heavy stalks of corn. Finally fully harvested. Canada geese in their thousands have alighted on those fields to feast on whatever has been left for them, before their long, determined flight from winter. Fields planted with pumpkin now reveal themselves. The frosty nights have discouraging the pumpkins' leafy surroundings; dried up completely, now revealing those headlight-bright orange orbs' suspected presence.

Blackbirds, squirrels, groundhogs and crows scratch through the fields and the nearby woods looking for edible leftovers. They seem oblivious of the scrabbling presence one of the other, intent in their pursuit. Semi-hibernating animals dependent on their clever storage of bits of sustenance; the birds looking for readily available tidbits, not as vulnerable to winter misery as the groundhogs and the squirrels, though one will migrate the other stay.

In the ravine, the ground that was only yesterday beginning to dry out - the first time we can recall throughout this long very wet summer - is once again drenched thanks to last night's generous rainfall. Earth that was so dry it was beginning to cleave into quite discernible cracks, now knitted comfortably together again. Overnight, the force of the wind and rain knocking long-dead branches down off their stubborn clasps of the trees that grew them.

Apart from the crimson candles the sumac hold aloft, their long slender compound leaves have also turned bright fiery-red. Underbrush is drying out, absorbed as the detritus of the forest floor. Ash trees are loosening their leaves, those pale yellow leaves. Elms, already long under duress, have shed their leaves, brown, crinkled, onto the ground below. Willows still fresh and green, not yet ready to welcome fall. Nuthatches clamber down a tree trunk, chattering chickadees close by.

The beech are showing hints of colour change, and the maples - oh, those maples, those outrageously magnificent maples, with their blush-peach gradations, their flaming red, alternately bright yellow leaves, they're the leader of the colour parade. Under foot already there's a random sprinkling of fallen leaves, and their sweet acridity caresses our nostrils as we crumple through the crisp offering.

It's all so nostalgic. Everywhere, the frantic activities of the squirrels; the tiny red officious squirrels, the quarrelsome black, and the elusive grey squirrels of our local forests. And the swift activities of the resident chipmunks, in their concerted search for food items to convey to their winter caches. Bluejays cry out their shrill objections. Is it something we said in our lament for the passing of summer?

Hard to believe the passage of time that has taken us so swiftly through yet another summer. We hardly had the opportunity to fully appreciate it, we're convinced. Yet it's gone, to return only once we've experienced the full cycle of fall and that long, so long winter.