Guess I’m feeling my age but it was too cool to sit in the swing and ponder after supper today. I was too lazy to get a sweater so I went to the lady den and watched my world through the room’s nine windows. The birds, enjoying their supper sunflower seeds, frolicked back and forth from the bannisters to the feeders. I’m watching the bamboo dance in the cool breeze, leaning over and patting each other. Their leaves are highlighted yellow like they just touched the tip of their leaves to Mother Nature’s palette, sliding through the yellow paint.

Twilight is creeping up and Mother Nature is getting her watercolors ready to color the sunset. I’m watching the sunset come alive across the horizon, beautiful in the colors of a cluster of Concord grapes. Mother Nature’s palette is full of purple and mauve, magenta and framboise. The high clouds are vivid pink, their bellies a contrasting bluish purple. A magnificent rendering of the day’s demise.

Earlier in the day I drank my coffee watching Mother Nature’s critters preparing for the cold weather of the coming winter. I enjoy watching the squirrels and chipmunks stuffing their cheeks with acorns. A squirrel can hold two nuts in their mouth but a chipmunk can hold six! Read about chipmunks and research says a chipmunk can hold 70 sunflower seeds and 31 corn kernels in their cheeks. I think the chipmunks in my yard are eating more than they are storing. Didn’t not know a chipmunk could be so big and bold. But there are four who have taken over the porch and boldly stop and gaze at me and Penelope. I think they are in food comas! Kat has been stalking them. She left me a chipmunk head as a prize yesterday.

I love the changing seasons. I love sweater weather. The colors of fall are magical to me. Mother Nature does her some of her best paintings on fall leaves, colors of the sunsets reflected on the delicate skin of the leaves. The yellows and reds and purples and oranges dress the trees in their fall frocks and flaunt themselves against the beautiful curtain of the sky canvas Father Sky has colored azure blue. “How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days,” George Burns. As we enjoy the fall we need to thank God for his blessings.

Fall leaves can represent the cycle of life. The leaves bud out and grow, dress themselves in wondrous colors, drop from the tree branches, and float slowly to the ground to die and fertilize the earth. We don’t mind the leafless trees because we enjoyed the beauty of their fall foliage. We know the spring will bring shades of green leaves to decorate the trees’ branches and shade our porches. Autumn is the transition between summer and winter. Temperatures are dropping and the days are getting shorter. Fall teaches us to embrace each day, to harvest our thoughts and prepare for the coming winter.

Fall also reminds us that sometimes we need to let go of things in order to grow. Trees shed their leaves in the fall and we might realize we’re holding on to thoughts or actions that we can let fall away like the leaves. When we’ve found ourselves old, we realize we lived through the spring and summer years of our lives and are transgressing from our fall years into the winter years. I feel I’m in my winter years.

In the fall years of our lives we shed our leaves, ready to boldly dress our naked branches, searching for the perfect things to decorate our limbs. Now we can choose our own paths, walking boldly and colorfully through the coming years. “Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature,” Friedrich Nietzsche. We can drop our leaves or we can gather nuts for the coming winter. We can choose to slow down and to nurture ourselves. We can remember that fall leaves don’t fall, they fly to the ground, and they dance in the wind.

“Autumn teaches us the beauty of letting go. Growth requires release — it’s what the trees do.” — Ka’ala