Fallen Leaves. The mass of colours, shapes, sizes and textures of leaves all jumbled together catches my interest every Fall. Gets me down on my knees in the dirt just to check it all out. What else is there besides leaves? Are there tiny critters too? And it always amazes me that there accumulates such a variety of leaves together, sometimes from trees that are quite a distance away - all ending up on the same small patch of earth, to end their days decomposing together.

Once the Fall colours have faded from glory and the weather turns a little colder, the leaves of the trees begin to fall. This point of the year always brings about split emotions for me. I recall gleefully flopping into huge piles of leaves to be almost buried in them; running through them on the streets and deriving great pleasure from the swishing and crunching sounds they make under my feet; but I also know as an adult that I will have to rake them. Endlessly. Raking and raking and raking. Hour after hour, day after day, and even then knowing that not all of them will have fallen before the snows come, and there will be this great mass of heavy, wet, partially decomposed leaves to deal with in the Spring.

So I hope you got out and really enjoyed the colours of Fall, because you are going to pay for it! Nature has it's way in the end! You may think you can control it, but no. It doesn't work that way. You have to rake and pile and remove. Changing from right to left handed raking, back and forth (so instead of having one side seized up and unfunctional, you can have both sides of your body seized!) you diligently scrape them all into a pile and begin loading the wheelbarrow to transport them to the compost…back and forth you go…back and forth…back and forth. And just when you are at the last load you look around to admire the efforts of your labours and realize that the wind has blown some of them around (quite a few of them actually!) and you have to rake the area again. Oh, and you have left a trail of them tumbling from the wheelbarrow as you traipsed to the compost bin. So now you have to rake up those as you go. Finally you decide you are finished and take that long hot soak to soothe the aching muscles, and retire. When you awake the next morning, stiff and aching and feeling proud of yourself for accomplishing something physical, and look out the window to check the day you realize that it was cold last night, and maybe breezy, and it doesn't look like you have even raked at all! "Does this never end?" you shriek.

So over the years I have experimented with a few ideas on how to work with it instead of against it. Now, I just enjoy the Fall and to heck with the raking. I do away with most of the grass (because that is where letting the leaves remain over winter does the most harm when spring comes) and  just let the leaves fall where they may. Let them decompose, returning the nutrients to the soil. Now I can spend most of my Fall enjoying its splendour. It is nature getting ready for the harshness of Winter. The trees sense the amount of daylight and the dropping temperatures and begin preparing themselves. They produce protective substances for the most sensitive areas and begin the slow process of stocking up new energy for the burst of  growth in the Spring.

People can sense the changes in their environment as well, and when it becomes a little frosty and the conditions are not supportive to growth, they put up protective barriers as well. Some unfortunately never get past that stage. They protect themselves, but do not do the internal work to stock up on energy for the next growth spurt. They toss off the leaves (disconnect with the sources of life as they have known it) and put up the barriers, and slowly wither away. There are others of course who take the opportunity to search for new sources of energy and  are ready for the Spring when it arrives. They are the seasons of nature after all, and it's so much more fulfilling to work with them rather than against them.

If you are interested in knowing more about the actual process the trees go through to  drop their leaves, check out Bill Nye's site .

The colourful leaves of Fall. I have a very idyllic view out my window that I try to take advantage of as often as possible.  It is one of my sources of sunshine as I watch the seasons unfold.

What is it with all these leaves anyway? Why are there so many colours? Why do they change at different times? And what the heck does it have to do with my life (except for the fact that if I want trees, I have to rake leaves!)?

Well, for trees it's a matter of light and the conditions of the environment. As Fall progresses and the days become shorter, the trees produce less chlorophyll from the light. The less chlorophyll the less green colour. When the process shuts down completely, the other colours are a reflection of what is left in the leaf. It's all relative to light and the environmental conditions.

For humans, I suppose the light could be likened to positive encouragement, love, support, all those good things that keep us growing, expanding and functioning in a healthy way. Our very own personal source of sunshine. Once the warmth from other souls begins to dwindle, we begin to shut down on our production of life and energy. We begin to wither, withdraw and produce defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from attack, just as the trees produce substances to protect themselves from the environment once the leaves are gone.

I know, we like to think we are an island unto ourselves, but we need that sunshine coming from somewhere whether we admit it or not. But it doesn't necessarily have to be other people. It can be something as seemingly insignificant as success with something we attempted that we weren't sure we could achieve; creating something new that didn't exist before; catching that moment at sunrise when the world begins to awaken to a new day full of surprises; or the friendly wagging of a puppy dog tail when it lays sight on you. It is anything that gives you a warm feeling inside, and a connection to something. It matters not what you are connected to really, just that you are connected. The thread of life.

This morning I woke to the first real frost of Fall. It is late October, a full moon, clear sky and the temperatures are slowly dropping. A clear indication that winter will arrive regardless of whether we want it or not (at least in this part of the globe!) As I sat at my window seat marveling at the beauty of frost glistening across the field in the early morning rays of sunshine my mind wandered (as it has been known to do occasionally) to how that is reflected in my own development as it enters the "fall" stage. Am I getting a little frosty around the edges?

Perhaps I am. If the way I reminded the contractor that finally arrived to fix a problem I had (after two weeks of phone calls with no response) that if he had at least notified me of his intention to eventually get here, there wouldn't be two contractors arriving the same day to fix one problem is any indication! And then of course there is the situation about the stove. I have a beautiful six-burner gas stove sitting in my living room. It has been sitting there for a year now. Between my habits of not being home every day ('on call' so-to-speak) and the contractor being very busy and not too interested in merely hooking up a stove, it has been patiently waiting. I step around it carefully every day; it takes up space where my chair and bookshelf should be; it means I cook with microwave and counter-top grill. But gosh darn it anyway…shouldn't I just be able to go out and walk through the trees, take photos, go visiting when I feel like it? At my age I ought to be able to do the things I want on my own schedule …right?

Sometimes living can be like making our way on a foggy day. No, I don't mean that we wander around in a daze  (well, maybe sometimes; maybe some of us)…but we can't always see clearly what lies ahead.  We have pictures in our mind of what the place looks like that we are headed to. We can envision how we are going to act when we get there. We can even play movies in our head about what is going to happen once we arrive, complete with the stage backdrops and a cast of characters. We can physically feel the emotions that will be connected to it. Excitement, apprehension, fear, contentment…they can all be felt as we imagine it. But we can't actually see with our eyes because we aren't there yet. There is a veil of mist between where we are headed and where we are right now. We know that place exists so we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, approaching one step at a time. Step by step we get closer, often without even realizing just how close we are until we arrive.

But there is also the possibility that with the mist obscuring our vision, we may be just one or two steps off to the left or right without realizing how close we are. It can be so frustrating and even sometimes depressing that we are trying so hard to make our way through the fog but it seems to be to no avail. We feel that we are still just plodding along day by day doing the same old things and not seeing any benefit from it. So sometimes we make the decision to just sit down in a safe place and wait for the mist to clear.

Waiting for this mist to clear can sometimes have advantages, but it depends on how long we sit and wait.  Stumbling around obstacles can drain one's energy and cause us to doubt that the place actually does exist where we thought it did. The longer we wait, the less likely we are to set out again without some encouragement. We either get lost in the fog and just sit there waiting for it all to end or we pick one of the places that we can see, and decide to just hang out there for the  time being. Maybe we will continue on our course later…maybe…sometime…if we feel like it.

From the Depths of my Soul

I am not exactly sure what it is about me and water, but every time I get near it, I breathe again. I do my best thinking beside the water. Some of the happiest memories I have include it. It is part of me - literally and spiritually.

Several years ago standing at the edge of the ocean on a blustery day there was this feeling that overcame me. I was  in a special place. Between the sea and the sky and the shore I stood alone. The waves were crashing in; the seagulls were crying out;  there were children and dogs running, laughing, barking; and then there was me. Just me touching the sea, the shore, the sky…and something much bigger than any and all of it touching me. 

Our life (in a general way) is spent either on the earth, in/on the water, or in the air. Here I was at the edge of all three spaces, connected to something I could not see, hear or touch. But I certainly felt it, and the feeling was awesome! It was a feeling that lifted me to a completely different level of existence. Oh, I don't mean I had an epiphany and ran out and hugged a tree, but I did spend a good part of that day musing about what the heck had happened and why and how! I still can't answer those questions, but I can still bring that feeling back just by thinking about it. I find that truly and awesomely amazing! And because it was such an impressive feeling, I find myself pulled in the direction of repeating it.  Not in an obsessive way, but looking over what I do in a day, I realize that the search for repeated connections with that feeling is what leads me forward in my work and my daily living.

Nature has always intrigued me; caused me to stop and investigate. Watching birds relate to each other, bugs go about their busy days, and gusts of wind rippling across the waters amuses me and causes me to take a quiet moment away from the busy world. But from that moment on, I realized that I was a part of nature just as much as the rocks and the trees, and it was a part of me. The earth was a continuation of my solid framework; the waves lapped at my feet and their water was my water; the wind blew through me rather than around me.  It changed me. That moment has influenced how I live my life, how I approach my work, and how I make my decisions.

We like to believe that it is the big things in life that change us. The catastrophes. And yes, I will grant you, they do. They test our character to the limits. They try our patience. Some of them drag us in to the depths of despair and we wonder if we have what it takes to survive it all. But it is frequently the tiny things that go completely unnoticed by others that have the most profound impact on our lives and how we make our decisions.

So it will be these tiny things that form the basis of my writings here. And by tiny, I don't exactly mean ' extremely small' - I mean that they aren't things that we put high on the scale of what we have to do today. They are just things that "happen" somehow during the course of our day.

Please, feel free to comment, I would love to hear from you -