Fall back

Approach Of Winter by William Carlos Williams

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden. 

 I guess we're getting to that time of year again. Enjoy your extra hour's sleep tonight!

More meetings with remarkable trees

As regular readers of my blog will know, I have a thing about this particular tree. So when it was all frosty and beautiful today, I nipped round and got this shot of it.

Pretty eh?

They were all yellow

Well, it was another grey, wet and rainy day today. But, do you know what? Not for me it wasn't.

I had the same weather as everyone else of course, but I decided it wasn't going to get to me. And I don't mean, get to me in the same way as it got to me yesterday as I struggled home from Edinburgh up the Royal Mile in the pouring rain and then home from Stirling station in the torrential downpour that graced central Scotland yesterday evening.

No, I mean get to me as in make me grumpy and sad. All I had to do was look out of my window at this ray of light and my heart lifted. That, and the fact that it was Friday and my day started well, I had time for lunch (even if I did have to sit on my own) and I also had time (and company) for coffee.

I may only have got one thing done. It may have rained most of the day. I may not have been invited to a firework party this evening. I may be super exhausted. I may have had some grumpy moments.

But, on the whole, life is good. And that's good enough for me.

After all, look how they shine for you. And all the things that you do.

A poem lovely as a tree

Waiting to go
all the leaves want to go
though they have achieved
their kingly robes.

Weary of colours,
they think of black earth,
they think of
white snow.

Stealthily, delicately
as a safebreaker
they unlock themselves
from branches.

And from their royal towers
they sift silently down
to become part of
the proleteriat of mud.

(Autumn, Norman MacCaig)

Ok, I know I'm childish ...

But I pass this tree every day on my way to and from work. And it just makes me giggle.

 Anyone else see what I see?

Meetings with extraordinary trees

This is quite possibly my favourite tree in Stirling, and at the moment I think it's looking pretty spectacular.

What's even better is that it's located in the site where I work, so I get to see it almost every day. But it's the times when there are no cars around that you see it in its full splendour - like today. It never fails to make me smile.