Tree filigree

Winter weather has arrived over a month early this year -- we have even had bursts of snow flurries, so unusual for November in North Carolina. Some leaves remain on beeches and oaks, but most have come down in the past week of rain, wind and unseasonable chill. Just when I'm missing all those brilliant leaves that graced the landscape, though, I look up and see how very lovely are the now bare branches lacing the sky. Mother Nature's beauty is unlimited to time and season -- her gifts just keep coming, sustaining and comforting us whenever we take the time to look up, out, over there ...

More Fall Photos

Japanese maple becoming scarlet stained glass, beauty berry glowing at our garden entry, yellow kerria leaves playing amid oakleaf hydrangeas' multicolored show, beeches blazing against blue skies ... all so lovely.

Fall's Wild Garden

Fall's wild, colorful tapestries of yellow, gold, red, russet, orange, brown and green have again captivated and amazed me, even in my sixth-eighth autumn. It never gets old. The season has been so beautiful this year, richly painting my own natural garden and all the wild woods and meadows around us here in the heart of North Carolina. Seeds in abundance appear with no effort on their part that I can see, offering food to all us creatures and the promise of new green growth in a few months. I am awed by the power packed into seeds, big and tiny. Many falls ago I wrote:

What lovely silhouettes, these pregnant weeds,

Most potent time of year, season of seeds!