Tales of Li'l Foot

I love Autumn. I was born in October. It’s in my genetic makeup to love Autumn. This Autumn though it’s been a weird foliage. There hasn’t been a “WOW” factor this season. The leaves started changing colors in August. It’s like Mother Nature wasn’t sure what to do. A tree would change color here and there and the rest were all “dude, not yet”. And then another 2 would start to change and the cycle went on. There wasn’t a unified change of all the trees together at once, like there usually is. It was a very weird phenomenon.

A week ago my sister-in-law asked me to pick up some pretty leaves for her and send them to Hawaii. She wanted to do a project with the kids she has in daycare. I was really excited when she asked me to help out. So excited that I sort of forgot that Autumn took a giant poop on foliage this year and almost all the trees were already bare. I managed to scrounge up some really pretty Japanese Maple leaves and Burning Bush leaves from our neighbor’s trees. I announced to him as I walked over that I was going to be stealing his leaves. Being that if I didn’t take them he’d have to leaf blow them, he didn’t have a problem with it at all.

On Halloween we went to Newtown and I happened to snap the picture you see above. It was on a whim as Li’l Foot was collecting some loot that I happened to look past the house we were standing in front of and see the landscape. It just struck me as beautiful. And of course, there’s one of the last Japanese Maples still hanging on for dear life to what’s left of Autumn.

All in all Autumn was generally a great big disappointment, but it’s ok, there are kids halfway around the world who are putting together an arts and crafts project in a place on earth that doesn’t get to see the changing of the leaves. I’m glad I was able to share even just a little piece of what Autumn is about.