Fall returns

Tree tops still lit by  the last light of the sun 

Ahh, Fall has returned to the mountain. October feels like October again, courtesy of former Hurricane Karen.  An inch of rain can’t make up for a nearly 6” deficit, but it sure did help, and the storm cleared out those warm temperatures, too.  I can’t see the mountain a mile to the west of my cabin yet, but I can see the sky overhead again.  I’d guess that something less than half the leaves have come down, perhaps not that many.  It’s quite an improvement.

What’s odd is to see the forest as green again.  Now that the colored leaves, mostly yellows and browns, were knocked down by the wind and rain, the leaves remaining on the trees are those that haven’t turned color yet.  So fall will be a two-phase color change this year.  The next and final phase is likely a few weeks away.  

Baby Dog seemed to like the new temperature, too, if her racing around for no reason is any indication. The cats seem to think the constantly falling leaves are birds.  They race to the windows and bat at them or “chirp” at the falling leaves.  The leaves flutter to the ground, apparently in birdlike fashion.  The cats eventually seem to get that a leaf isn’t a bird, and they look disappointed until the next leaf falls, when the entire game starts again.

Yesterday I saw a flock of geese, high overhead, that may well have been a flock of migrants heading south.  With geese, it can be difficult to tell if they are migrating or not. They move around a lot, and this time of year even the local birds pretend they are actually going somewhere important. If this was a flock of migrants, it was an early flock, the leaders of the pack.  Once I see a day with multiple flocks I’ll know the waterfowl are on the move south to the Chesapeake Bay.  For now, this flock was maybe migrating, but it was certainly a sign of things to come.