Peak fall

 

 

Kubota Garden

After a wet dreary start to November, a gorgeous sunny day yesterday with the fall foliage in Seattle at its peak. One of those days when you ask yourself, why would anyone live anywhere else? Later today a different question, with a series of potent storms through the weekend, including wind to strip the trees bare.

Some lovely descriptive poetry from another century, back when readers weren't so scatterbrained:

November

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapory air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.

One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.

Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

William Cullen Bryant