Addicted to color

           Ours is a working class neighborhood.  Nothing special.  Nothing to write home about – unless you’re making a study concerning the utter paucity of architectural aesthetic involved in tract-house design during the late nineteen seventies. Or if you’re considering the remarkable strength and value of relationships forged among neighbors who’ve shared the same four streets for multiple decades.  Then you might write your mom about us.  And either way, you’d have a lot to report.

            When I walk down these streets, I pass through time right along with space.  I walk a woven way, through thin, dark threads, pretty well forgotten, still bound by the bright colors—one of which glows with my joy and relief that Rachel has passed through swine flu – which I was afraid she would get – and come out the other side just as sassy (though worn almost to pieces) as ever.

            I cannot let go of Autumn.  I can’t just take a couple of pictures and call it a day.  Every time the light changes, every turning shade of glory sends me running after the camera again.  How many pictures of leaves can you take, pray tell?  Turns out, about as many as you can take of puppies.  I do have some of the mountain—G and I got one ride up there with the leaves before the storms rolled in and swallowed September. But these are of the neighborhood—okay, mostly of my yard.  Down here, we tend more to yellows—Box Elder, Aspen, Poplar, Ash—with the occasional splash of Burning Bush or Maple (should I be capping these?).  And the scarlet of our unrelenting Virginia Creeper, which usually flames in a day, then goes limp and brown in a breath – and the peeping deep red of apples.

            Some of the shots are earlier in the month.  Some later.  But the rain—the way water brings out the color in stream smoothed stones?  Rain does the same for organic things.  As you will see.  In this interminable series of images.

            Attention: which one is your fave?  (Product analysis: delivering the goods, just the way you like them).  (I’m going to do a little give-away soon.  But your participation in this survey has nothing to do with that.  Nothing. Really.)(I know, I know—a pathetic bid for a kind word.)

First: a matter of honor and serious business

The proof.  Here is the entire plate of treats, untouched.  Even though, Megs, I TOTALLY agreed with you.  And I took them all over to Michelle.  AND HER KIDS ATE THEM IN FIVE SECONDS.  I ask you—is there any decency in the universe?  

See?  All the spiders have all their dang legs.  And all three choc/pretzel wands are there.  Sob.

I give you:

AUTUMN

ONE: Pine and Virginia Creeper

TWO: River Birch

THREE

FOUR:  Box Elder, turning

FIVE:  Pine and Creeper

SIX:  Box Elder

SEVEN

EIGHT:  Dog.  Old dog.

NINE

TEN

Two old dogs.  With pumpkins.  Pumpkins make me incredibly happy. 16% of the year, they sit on my porch.

ELEVEN

TWELVE

Diana’s gorgeous little maple.

THIRTEEN:  Front porch.

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN:  Mountain

SIXTEEN:  Child with pumpkins and hand.  Hand of my son.

SEVENTEEN:  Morrise’s gigantic Burning Bush hedge.  The morning sun is just finding it.

EIGHTEEN:  You’ve seen this man before.  His beard is also turning.

19.  The street.  This is just coming up on the peak of some of these colors.  You can see that the mountains still have a faded blush of red and yellows.

20.  The neighborhood steeple against the coming storm.

21.  We planted this tree almost thirty years ago.  It was tiny.

22.  Now it has pine cones.  COOL.

23.  Front gate with bugs.  Taken just  before I inadvertently knocked one of them off.  And since I think these guys were a mated pair, then I had to knock the other one off too.  So they could find each other.  Because I couldn’t find the first one.

24.  Stone’s amber tree, just an edge, and then Kate’s big orange tree.  But Kate moved before it got anywhere near this big. I wonder if she drives by now and wishes she could still look out her window and see this tree?  And then Susan’s red maples?  Whatever those always red things are.

25.  Nancy’s yard.  You can even sell chain link in this light –

26.  The other side of the burning bush hedge.

27.  Close up of our mess.  I was struck with the subtle orange of the leaning aspen against the yellow of the box elder (I’ve given up on the caps), the deep red of the shockingly vibrant creeper and the deep green of those pines.

28.  I love this mixing of colors.

29.

30.

31.

32. The last of the apples.

33.  See what I mean about the rain?

34.  PUMPKINS MAKE ME HAPPY!!!!  So does the purple in this bundle of corn stalks.

35.  Cheating: inside, a basket of gourds.

36.

37.

38.  I know – you’ve seen the street a million times.  But this time the sky is such a deep blue.  See?  I just keep trying to capture it – maybe process it, or impress it in my mind.  Why do the seconds pass so quickly?  Like melody: a tone that you hold in your mind until the next tone comes, so that the progression becomes music, one moment touching, melding with the next till you have the illusion of a fabric.  As though life were all one thing instead of progression of individual pixels.

39.  Just wild.  Words that come to mind: plethora.  Profusion.  Abundance.   Chaos.  To please the eye and gladden the heart.

40.  This is the last one.  And the least successful, I think, as I did not capture the deepness of the red.  But I love the shadow under the pine and the blue berries, bursting from scarlet stems.

There.  As promised.  Did you like it Kath?  I like it.

The color pretty much peaked with that rain storm.  But still, when the light shifts I snatch tiny bits of autumn out of the air.  Corners of green that have finally given way to lemon yellows.  It’s all fading now.  And then will come the days when trees are nothing but tracery against the gray storm or the deceptively cheerful blue of a frigid sky.  But I like that, too – because I get to hold still and stay inside (horses being the exception) and read a dang book.