Leaves falling down

This is the last photo I will post of good fall color around Roundtop. The leaves are nearly all down today. A few days with a slight breeze was all it took to take the leaves from good color to brown to on the ground.

And in just that little space of time, suddenly I have lots of natural light at the cabin! Even on a cloudy night, as last night was, it seems almost bright at night because I can see the sky. I look forward to the falling of the leaves every year simply because I enjoy the added light so much.

The leaves are ankle deep on my decks, even though I swept them clean both days of the weekend. By the next morning, it didn’t look as though I’d done any sweeping. If there’s one constant about living in the woods, with the forest coming right up to the doors, it’s that I will never get ahead of the leaves.

This morning as I left the cabin, I waded through the leaves again. If I hadn’t swept them off the decks, I would be shin high in leaves. And that could happen before the end of the week, as I have a busy week ahead and will likely not have much time to spend at the cabin, let alone time to sweep the leaves.

You might think that once the leaves are down, my leaf sweeping regimen would end. That’s not true. As long as the leaves are dry, the slightest breeze will toss them about, and somehow they will end up on the decks again. It’s only when the leaves are wet or buried under snow that they’re not finding their way onto my deck. Sweeping leaves is not nearly as bad as mowing grass, at least in my mind, but it’s also something that needs to be done more frequently and for longer during the year. That doesn’t mean I’d prefer mowing grass. Not at all. Not for a moment.