THE TELLIN' TREE

 The Tellin’ Tree two doors down is flaunting her sun-kissed rosy cheeks for the past few days, letting us know that FALL is approaching with these even-cooler days and nights. She's always the first to blush, the first to swirl down her leaves, the first one we head for to scuff our feet through the piles on the sidewalk.

September has been absolutely glorious, with all the sun-filled days, the cloudless blue stretching overhead with nary a thought of gray, and the temperatures just begging us to be out and about.

The sounds outside during this dry, cool time have been of slow-breeze drifts of leaves, just beginning to do their earthward dance, settling onto the arid crispness of already-sere lawns and skittering down the drive and sidewalks toward the unabashed ivy, green as always, wending its way across the lawn at a yard’s pace a year. It’s still all green in the yard, but of a subtler, more subdued hue, with a lot of yellow to the mix, especially in the rampant grapevine stretching from house to garage to outbuildings to trees.

I swear, that stuff is really a strain of kudzu, transported up here on our shoes or tire-treads, covering our landscape like an abandoned homestead in the South---those old silver-gray buildings, bushes, stark-standing trees, and long-chuttered-their-last John Deeres gone to rust---all engulfed in the green tide until the whole landscape is like one of those baby-toys made of soft fabric, with the little farm buildings and trees and fields just gentle lumps on the landscape.

I do believe, if the whole Earth fell apart, our little piece of it would be just sitting here, all of a piece, in a monkey-barrel hug by all the grabby-toed ivy on the ground, and tenacious tendrils of grapevine---one big wad like those Come-See balls of rubber bands advertised on saggy signs along highways the Interstate passed by.

There’s a comfort to the changes of Fall---a settling-in, a tamping-down, as if the energy of all that Spring and Summer growth and activity has smoothed into completion with the changing of the moon. There’s no more grabbing of towels and sunblock in a rush to head for the pool, or great need to keep the flowerbed weeds at bay, or the nudge to pick whatever’s overgrowing the garden. That season’s winding down so fast now that I'm feeling the pull of the "COME OUT!" this day---this last day on the cusp of October, to go this weekend in search of a pink pumpkin, a gallon of cider, a great bouquet of colorful dried corn and shucks for the porch. Three birthdays to late-celebrate tomorrow---first time we did that in our favorite Month---OCTOBER!

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