These are the weeks of autumn. The season is long, but the actual event is a sporadic part of it these days. Perhaps a bit late in arriving, certainly erratic in its behavior. But on balance the milder temperatures are nice, and maybe they’ll stick around until February, when spring should begin early, which is on time.

The leaf turn is promising, as you can see here. All of these are photos I took on campus last week.

Jayita Bhattacharjee, the poet, journalist, author, wrote that “Autumn is the season when cathedrals of memories are built. They become palaces of light, amid the falling leaves.”

“Only with a leaf can I talk of the forest,” wrote the Albanian poet, Visar Zhiti.

“There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky,” said the Serbian American writer, Dejan Stojanovic.

“Each leaf tells us a story. The story of its struggle. The story of the storms that it faces in life,” notes Avijeet Das.

“Even a leaf can fly if it so wishes,” according to Anthony T. Hincks.

The Italian outdoorsman and poet David Passarelli tells us that “Every twig, every leaf, a scholar, participating in this universal dialogue, a profound and ancestral communication.”

Perhaps that’s how Akilnathan Logeswaran came to know that, “When the time has come, every leaf turns to face the sun!”

Then there’s Shel Silverstein. “And the tree was happy.”

This happy tree is a ginko. It is the oldest one on the campus. Several are older than the campus. Others, younger than this, are older than the nation. But this guy is the dean of trees.

It sits in front of Bunce Hall, one of the campus icons, and the very first academic on the campus. It opened in September of 1923. The tree had been there for more than 150 Septembers prior.

In between that building and that tree is where every student there starts their studies, at the President’s Welcome, and ends their studies, at graduation.

If you’ll notice that tree on the left side of the photo in front of Bunce, you’ll see another tree with some remarkable character in its trunk.

Hanging from the front porch of Bunce Hall are banners that are a part of the university’s new marketing campaign.

At just the right time the other day I was in a meeting and was able to say, “I dunno. Seems like you could just do that and say you’re defying definition … ” and I brought the house down. So, at the very least, the faculty are aware of the new branding.

Speaking of perfect weather and fine foliage, here are a few shots from a recent bike ride. I started a bit later than I wanted, which meant I didn’t get to ride as far as I would like (’tis the season for that, sadly) but it did mean that the roads were quieter. And I had this going for me.

I like how the road dips and curves as it gets over that little nameless creek bed in the woods. I don’t move fast enough to really notice it, but it looks cool.

It did not turn foggy, but the lens on my camera fogged up.

One field later, there, that’s better.

And then I got back in the neighborhood, where one of the big welcoming trees is beginning its show. And look, it is still daylight out.

I got in 25 miles on that ride but now, looking at that photo, I’m thinking I might have been able to sneak two or three more before the darkness won out. Let that be a lesson to me.

The equinox came … or did it arrive? … or did we catch up to it? Or it will. We mark the equinox tomorrow. But the autumnal weather pushed its way in this weekend. Rain came with it. Everything was gray, except when it rained, except when it was sunny. Weather forecasts are spotty now, thanks to unnecessary budget cuts to NOAA and NWS. This won’t be a real problem until it is. But fear not! When it is, we’ve also cut FEMA to the bone. We are a very smart society.

Anyway, the weather was a bit of everything this weekend. We even had some blowing rain and some sideways rain. At least the drought monitor program, and if that data is still working as expected, we are now officially out of our drought. I haven’t mentioned it here since the beginning of the month, but our maps changed about two weeks ago. Take longer showers, kiddies! The aquifer is full!

Or so I assume.

Friday I went to campus to take part in a Professional Learning Community. We are encouraged to take part i some of these. There is a wide variety presumably there is something for everyone. You could see it as a chore, but, really, you’re being paid to learn things. This semester I am in a food, agriculture, and forestry PLC. I like food. I have a degree in agriculture. I studied forestry for two-plus years. I figured it’d be a good program for me. Friday was its first meeting, and Friday we went to the campus farm.

Our guide told us about the work she and her colleagues and a bunch of students are doing. They’re just getting started, but it is already interesting, and already breaking out of the humble beginnings category, just in year two.

This is not a land grant school, but here we are, on a small regenerative farm, where scientific work is taking place, where they are helping support students and the community with fresh produce, restore land, and also make a few bucks for a good cause. The president of the university grows some peppers out there, he and some students work the land. The peppers get turned into a hot sauce. It’s sold, with proceeds going to an emergency student fund. The president is very proud, and this is a cool running project. Also, the hottest hot sauce is so hot the catering services aren’t allowed to provide it on campus.

There’s also a nice little birch stand out there.

Birch bark is incredible versatile. You can create bowls (makeshift or otherwise) for food and water storage. People have used it to make roofs, canoes, cordage, body armor. You can actually eat the inner bark — some indigenous tribes saw it as famine food — and may have medicinal properties.

But there’s a researcher here who is doing some science beyond what are understood as those practical, historical uses. Presently there are experiments underway studying the adhesive qualities of the stuff.

I wonder how you get a project like that underway. How many hoops that research team had to jump through, if they got pushback, or if had to work the phones and forms a lot. I bet I’d get turned down if I suggested something comparable.

The conversation at the farm inspired an idea and by the time I got back home I had a semester-long thumbnail sketched out. I waited a few hours to send it on, just so it didn’t seem immediately hasty. It doesn’t have to do with those trees, but we’ll see if it becomes anything more than an email. Could be fun.

Let’s check on a few of the things growing at home. I’m still not sure if this a flower or a weed. The definition simply has to do with intention, and I don’t know if we want this there or not. But it looks nice. Also the bees like it.

The rose bushes are still going strong. These things are resilient, prolific, and persistent.

We have two giant hydrangeas, and this one has had a great year. Also, the rains didn’t knock it over this summer. Hopefully it’ll give us a few more weeks before the beautiful decay begins. Again, the bees are pleased.

Inside, Saturday, I caught the diminishing sun at just the right time. Usually there’s a cat on this landing, but they both missed out here.

Sunday it rained. And then it rained some more. And it kept raining. And while it rained, I admired the still-budding flowers. And I actually stopped to smell the roses.

And, friends, there’s something to that expression. They smelled lovely. If you get the chance, you should do that.

I make this joke that we should keep this weather until March. It’d be nice for a lot of reasons, especially the flora.

But, ya know, if it warms back up a bit after this cold front moves through, that’d be nice, too.

At the risk of putting a busy week behind, and after a productive afternoon trying to stay on top of everything, I enjoyed a little bike ride today. The highs only got to the mid-70s, and then I messed around and almost missed my window. The temps had started to slip just a bit. It felt cooler outside than inside, but you don’t notice such things when you finally get the heart rate up.

Before I got out of the neighborhood, I noticed the first real signs of fall.

The whole of it was a gray ride, through the neighboring neighborhood, into town, around the lake, back through one of the busy intersections, past the new purposeless developments and into the countryside. When I got precisely halfway into the ride, almost exactly so, the occasional sprinkle became a mist, which evolved into a rain.

I was riding into it. But I had a big right turn and I figured I had a 50-33 shot of riding my way out of the rain. What I got, when I turned right, was a full on rain shower. And I rode in that for the last 12 miles. And in the last seven miles it was just rain and headwinds.

It wasn’t a fast ride, but it was the right ride to start autumn. Let’s have a great one!