An eerie, filtered light reached over the landscape this morning, just before sunrise. Small soft and fluffy pink clouds, looking as if they had been displaced from a spring sky, moved out along concentric circles from the east, reaching across the background of purple to the north. Against the oddly pastel-like colors, the skeleton-like leaves of the hybrid oak flipped back and forth in the pre-dawn wind, having just turned ochre after being their summer green for so long.
The white oak up the hill has finally turned, too. Overnight, it has gone orange, with scattered spots of red. The southern sky above it is suddenly filled with small white thunderheads, hiding behind streaks of purple as the light grows. Closer to me, the leaves of the young red oak sport multicolor patches.
A few tattered rags of deep crimson still cling to the nearly denuded Washington hawthorn. Those few tatters are all that remain of the leaves of the Virginia creeper, which two weeks ago so covered the tree that it was canopied in brilliant crimson. I just learned this fall that the creeper’s leaves turn bright red to attract the birds to its dark blue berries. I miss the leaves now they’re gone; but the birds are still here.
