of celebration and mild regrets. Fall is a time
of harvest, bounty of the earth's generosity
in sharing with us a cornucopia of edible
fruits of the ground, the sun and rain of
summertime. The grains and seeds, roots
and vegetables that sustain us testify to
our dependence on Nature's largess and
our seasonally-grateful memories. Yet
reluctant to view the passage of yet another
year, when we mourn the reality of fleeting time.
Still, this is the season bringing twofold
pleasures - those that entrance the critic's
eye in a brilliant exposition of botanical
ripeness and splendour - with deciduous
trees and shrubs blazing the landscape in
memorable shades of Nature's ineffable
palette. The absorbing landscapes of
mesmerizing dusks and dawns; the sun
setting lower on our horizons, preparing
for the winter equinox, offers scintillating
sky-full blushes of rose and mauves, the
firmament ablaze on the cusp of darkness.
harvest moons clinging to the roof of the
sky, then slipping toward the horizon as a
breathtaking disk of light and promise eases
our lament over summer's escape. Garden
tools are placed in storage, as the last of fall
flowers fade, and gardens are placed in an
hiatus of deserved rest, to be resuscitated
many cold winter months hence.
Creatures of the woods sufficiently sentient
and inheriting their species' memories, seek
to provide stored seeds, nuts and forage to
take them toward hibernation and beyond.
The lakes, woodland creeks and rivers will
bond into ice, aquatic life taking refuge
where they may. But here, these gentler days,
the wind abates as the atmosphere briefly relents.
Affording us in its grace, a briefly tenuous
backward look at the warmth and beauty that
were unreservedly ours a few short months
earlier. Shorter days are now inexorably
closing us within winter months. But now,
right now, the delectation of Indian Summer
with its bright, insouciant transit, is ours.
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