Autumn treetops.

Who is holding on? And who is letting go?

Nature photo of the day: autumn leaves are all about letting go - when the time is right.

short and quick
long, dramatic, spectacular, breathtaking, out-of-this-fall, and drawn out
there's no right
or wrong
way to do it
all a tree has to do is
let go
of the leaves
it has cared for since spring
walnuts are undisturbed by the situation, saying farewell with ease
while cherries bolden their gaze, holding tight a little while longer
oaks are the toughest lot of them all, willing the rattly leaves to stay six months, less or more than can be accounted for, since it's hard to know when they let go one-by-one, rather than hundreds in a wind blow
which leads me to remember
we are all ready to let go
in our own time
not sooner, never before,
when the time is right
and sometimes when it's not,
but always at that divine moment
when we lose ourselves
in the wind
riding the breeze to our next calling in life

- Cheryl M. 

How often do you take a break from the screen to get outdoors?

How often do you take a break from the screen to get outdoors and see something like this?

Personally, we find a reason to get outdoors every single day, to break the trance of too much screen-time. If we can’t find the time, we make the time.

As for the answer to the second question - we will never see this moment again.

Read that last line again.

While the inside of our homes can be pretty static, nature is constantly changing.

Tomorrow there will be fewer leaves on the trees than today.

Tomorrow there may be more clouds, certainly can’t be less than on this rare clear blue sky of today.

Tomorrow the colors of the autumn leaves may be more showy, if the temperatures dip even lower in the night.

Tomorrow will never be the same.

Next year won’t be the same either.

Some trees will be gone (we lost six due to winds and drought this summer alone). Who survives, grows taller.

Branches will grow longer, reaching out to other trees, for comfort and support. Some will rot and take down others.

That’s the nature of life.

If you found the time (or made the time) to get out in nature today, what did you see?

As for the journal prompt of the day:

What memories do I have from childhood involving fall leaves?

Let me go first. When I was young, I actually loved to help with the yard work. You didn’t even have to pay, bribe or beg me to do it, I simply loved being outside doing something productive. Picking up sticks, mowing the lawn (first with a push mower, then a riding one, then on a larger tractor when we had a much larger yard), helping my Dad dig a ditch, stacking firewood, and more. My little hands were put to work and there was often plenty of it, there still is.

When it comes to fall leaves falling, I took delight in raking them too. I remember that we had a bamboo leaf rake which got the job done perfectly. And a wooden basket to haul them in, the likes of which I have never seen again, and can’t find a similar image online either. I’m confident my Mom has a picture in box in her basement…

And then there was our dog, Max. A ferocious Boston Terrier who loved to jump in those leaf piles I raked for him. Or, at least, he thought I did it because I loved him. He’d mess it up and I’d start all over, till he wanted to go back inside (which he often did). It was always fun while it lasted.

While the leaves, and the dog, let go a long time ago, the memories remain.

Happy falling into the spirit of letting go,

Cheryl