The week of grey, begets the month and seasons of grey. I’m not putting a picture here every day, but I’m thinking about doing so on Instagram, at least until the novelties of X days in a row wear out.
Or is that “wear me down”? That’ll happen. Second half of February. You can count on it. Anyway, there is still a lot of color to behold this week, the brilliance flaring until the chemicals dilute themselves in the cycles of the season just before our ability to misanthropomorphize it all.
That sky was today, the tree above was this weekend.
These two on-campus maples were today. They do like to show off:
See what I mean? I’ve given that maple tree meaning and purpose. I’ve given it ambition and ego. I did that in a sentence. Imagine what I can do when the clock falls back and I’ve got more reason to write, because it is dark out earlier.
I bet this leaf doesn’t see the weekend:
Now that I write that out, I wish I’d thought to mark the thing with a bread tie or something. Just to see. Maples, we say here every year, are nature’s first quitters. But there’s bound to be a tenacious leaf out there somewhere. A stubborn little thing, one where the petiole is just a wee bit stronger than all its brothers and sisters.
I did it again. I want that leaf to be strong, a signal of resistance for me and others who dread the coming of winter. But really I’m depriving the ground of important nutrients, or a landscaper a few more seconds making money with the leaf blower, or perhaps a mulch pile somewhere doing … mulch things.
Have you ever noticed the things we don’t anthropomorphize? Something to consider, isn’t it?
