October’s End

I knew this October would not be the glowing consolation prize received by us all for the impending Winter. The leaves stayed green, as usual on the silver maples until the third week in October. I walked the seven-year old to school, and everything was as it should be, but this was a short day and school dismissed at around eleven o’clock. I flew out the door, fearing I would be late carrying an umbrella to shield myself from the ever-present rain, and when we got back to the house, they yard was full of lemon yellow perfect leaves and the tree was next to bare. This all happened within a few hours. I never have seen anything like this. The change would be gradual and lovely to see, and for about three years the yellow leaves have lasted two weeks into November, but this year my  trees started waving their bony fingers at the sullen skies too early like they couldn’t wait to rid themselves of the last of those parasitic leaves that gave them life all through the Spring and Summer. I remember the day their red winter buds burst open revealing somethings that alway reminded me of grapenuts, and I have no idea what they are, but they fall like cereal orbs all in the gutters and everywhere causing immediate gutter cleaning because rain-soaked grape nuts will hold back anything, they are like lead. But soon the first tiny leaves appeared, and as Frost said, “Nature’s first green is gold, it’s hardest hue to hold” and I knew this time was short, but was in love with these days. Then as the leaves filled out and turned true green, of course the next deluge was the helicopter pods the trees shoot off leaving the hope of hundreds of new babies of which it seems, ninety percent survive. And if you don’t get to your gutters fast enough, the infant trees begin to grow because of the leftover dirty grape nuts which must be like egg sacs to them. Well, anyway, I was cheated out of the thinning of the green as the leaves yellow appeared slowly on a daily basis. I was so mad at the trees, I wanted to put those Halloween tree faces on them, preferably ones with big buck teeth, but it’s really not their fault, they are just making a fool out of Al Gore, because we also barely had a summer. I suppose Winter will come like a Jack Frost cartoon and I will bring out my old Ebay Mouton coat which I never have worn, because I don’t make a good Joan Crawford impersonator. And now racing season is almost over, and I can’t content myself for shopping for hoaky snowmen and Christmas trees that look like rocket ships or ornaments that look like they were prizes won at a carnival. My Lady Mollie living near Indianapolis will feel the depression of a cold winter too, and without the sound of Cosworth engines and our hopes for Juan Montoya winning the Nascar championship being crushed, we will be a somber couple awaiting New Years Eve where we put Fred and Ginger to shame.