Goodbye Autumn! Thank You. You Will Be Missed.

Autumn is a beautiful time in Middle America. 

Trees fill the horizon with yellows, oranges, and reds. 

Warm days and cool nights make for lovely morning runs and afternoon strolls.  The world slowly turns from deep shades of green to a brilliant kaleidoscope of colors.

This weekend, our Autumn foliage reached its peak.  All around, families enjoyed the patchwork of color and the warm breezes.  During my morning run, I saw the most splendid, yellow maple surrounded by a golden blanket of fallen leaves.  By the time I returned with my camera in the afternoon, the tree was almost bare.  So fleeting is beauty.

Within the next couple of weeks, the colors will almost all be gone. 

From November through early March, our corner of the planet is cold, gray, and drizzly.  I hate all three.  

Day after day, I will drive to and from work each day in the dark with daylight hours quickly fading.  

Occasionally, a ray of light will break through the clouds.  Defiant red crabapples give bursts of red.  Christmas ferns keep patches of green on the forest floor.  Stubborn witch hazel provides glimpses of yellow  to understory.  Each are small spectacles of life until Spring arrives.

As I long for Spring, I will fondly look back, remembering the yellow maples, cinnamon cypress, and red crabapples.  Goodbye Autumn!  Thank you.  You will be missed.

P.S.:  The NCAA Cross-Country Championship will be ran at Tom Sawyer Park, where many of these photos were taken, on November 18.  Unfortunately, most of the beauty will be gone.