crab apple

I've always wondered why they're called crab apples, don't you?

They don't look crabby...

Autumn is here and I am loving it, every day the landscape looks different, colors change, leaves fall, nature is slowly getting ready to bed herself down for the winter.

This has always been my favorite season, and don't get me wrong, there are things I love about each one of the seasons, but for some reason, autumn wins the contest.

In upstate New York, which is where I live, the seasons are very distinct, they mark the passage of time in a big way, and there is always something to look forward to: the coming of the next one.

In winter, it's cozy fires and pretty snowflakes, the holidays, and those weeks in January and February when it's okay to hibernate, a little. Lots of books to read, cookies to bake, homemade soup every week. Boots.

In spring, it's the color green that seems to pop out overnight, and little flowers pushing their heads up out of the ground. Sunshine after you've forgotten what it feels like, days when you can finally shed that heavy winter coat.

In summer it's, well, summer, that sense of freedom we all seem to have leftover from the days when we were still in school and summers were special, carefree. Skirts and tank tops and iced tea. Sandals.

And in autumn it's the settling in, the ever-changing colors and the still-warm days followed by perfect-sleeping-weather nights, and apples and hot cider and pumpkins, frosty mornings that come too soon, and blue jeans.

Of course, there are things I dislike about each of the seasons as well, the sweating in summer, the freezing in winter, the mud in spring, and the... hmmm, can't think of anything I dislike about autumn just now. I guess that is why it's my favorite.

Through each of these changing backdrops, I can always go out into my garden and find something beautiful, or new, or at the very least, interesting. Different. Time passes every day, we change. The earth moves through another night, and we change. We don't notice sometimes, until months have passed.

Next spring, these crab apples will give way to lovely pink blossoms. Over the winter they may feed a bird or two.

But just now I'm going to look at them for a while, watch the leaves around them float gently to the ground, one or two or three at a time, until there is nothing left but bare branches.

Like a blank canvas or an empty journal page,

just waiting for nature's brush.