Autumn is Here Again

Autumn.  Don't you love it?  Salt Lake City has wonderful autumns.  A crispness in the air, jackets and sweaters in the morning, frost on the car windows.The Wasatch mountains protecting the Salt Lake valley on its east side have turned from summer brown to brilliant reds, oranges and yellows. In the afternoon the corn flower blue sky rides over the Wasatch, like a painted ceiling in some museum of nature.

Each year I stop my car or walk out of my house and take photos of this beauty.  When I look at the photos they are essentially the same as the year before and the years before that but I can't not take another shot. I took this picture last year while standing on my driveway.  I posted it in this blog last year but I think its worth a redux, don' t you?  No wonder Brother Brigham said "This is the Place".

The leaves are starting to fall in our large back yard.  Soon the yard will look like it did in 2010 when I took this photo

One of my favorite things is to stand on my lower patio looking down into the backyard and its leaves and watch two or three or more deer walk through the yard.  They sometimes seem to stop to enjoy the colors of the leaves and to lift their noses up as though enjoying the aroma of autumn.  Autumn does have its own characteristic aroma doesn't it.  Different than the other seasons.

Planning when to start raking the leaves is part science and part art.  With all of the trees we have and all of the different types of trees in our yard, the leaves fall over a period of at least five to six weeks.  I have to rake more than once.  Sometimes three or four times in order to keep up.  Start too soon and then I have to rake more times.  Finish too late and the leaves may be drenched by an autumn rain storm or covered with a blanket of snow.  You cannot bag wet leaves.  You have to watch the weather reports and watch the accumulation of leaves on the ground.  It is suppose to rain this evening. In fact, last night's weather report said it was going to start raining at 6:30 p.m.  Not 6:15, not 6:45, but at 6:30.  Oh to be able to be so precise in life.  I am betting against a 6:30 start.  I hope to be at work by 7:00 this morning and to get home by 4:00.  If so, I think I might spend an hour raking leaves.  I will put on a pair of jeans, a long sleeve tee shirt, a ball cap and a pair of gloves and head out for battle with the words of Robert Frost in my head:

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

 

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

 

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away.

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

 

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.