Feast of colors

Although, most years, trees are already denuded by November and autumn hues are gone, this time many trees still boast their true colors. They're a breathtaking experience each time I walk by them. This one, in particular, is a glorious beauty and the photographs cannot do justice to how its leaves glimmer in the sunshine. It is a feast for the eyes and it invites me to stop and look and look some more.

In my work on Sophia Peabody, I've written about how she complained that her letter readers in New England (mostly her family in Salem but also friends in Boston and including her husband-to-be Nathaniel Hawthorne) would not believe what she had to tell about her experiences in Cuba, where she spent 18 months to recover from migraines that had turned her into a near-invalid. She bemoaned the fact that words simply were not enough to describe a Cuban sunset or the full moon shining, unfettered, in an indigo sky above the coffee plantation where she spent her time on the island. I understand how she felt because words, and not even the camera, can express, or capture, the glory of fall around these parts. There is a sense of loss, of sadness, at the fact that such beauty cannot be replicated or captured, except in the recesses of memory, where it will ultimately fade, like dying stars do. Sophia Peabody sketched what she saw and, as her biographer has said, created "word paintings" to translate from her to her readers' eyes. I have the advantage of photographs which, though they can't equal what I see, they can at least give you an approximation of what it might be.

What is most touching is that the glory of fall is made up of each individual leaf. Recently, as I walked Lizzy on a carpet of fallen leaves, I realized that each one is, like a life, unique for that one year in which it sprouts on a tree. Another leaf will be born next spring but it's another one. These ones, the ones still hanging on for dear life, will never come again. They've had their moment in the sun, and, on so many trees this fall, the leaves are determined to make the very best of it up until the very last minute. Seems like a good attitude to me.

Though I adore the azures and greens of my island, I can't deny that the reds, oranges, and ocher yellows belong to fall. Everywhere you look, if you stop and take a minute to look, there is some tree or bush or grass clamoring for attention, showing off what they can do, even if fleetingly, even if only for a moment.

Also clamoring for attention around here recently has been Lazarus, the possum, which was completely unafraid recently when my husband went outside with his camera (the photo above is also his and you can tell because it's so much better than any of mine could be). Lazarus was the possum, as you may remember, that Rusty "killed" a few times in years past but who would always reappear, just as my husband said he would. But then we moved away from here and had no more Lazarus stories to tell.

We're not sure if this is Lazarus' great-grandson or Lazarus himself, but there's a possum that still hangs out on the porch. There's no dog to "kill" it anymore (Lizzy is now safely gated in the backyard) so it's obviously thriving. Neither one of us had ever seen such a huge possum before!

Also doing well is Hester, our feral cat who lives on the porch now. She's been there since we trapped and rescued her litter and since she was returned to us spayed by a rescue group that kept her kittens. On blustery days, like today, she's nowhere to be seen and I worry very much about her out in the cold. But on warmer days she eats and sleeps and plays and brings us her kills (mostly birds and moles and mice) to the porch, though she won't let us touch her, even after all these months. Perhaps by next year, in spring (and I can't believe we're almost at the end of 2013!), Hester will finally trust us and let herself be petted. We'll have to see.