Been on Fire with Sally Field

September 24, 2010  — Here in southern New Hampshire, we're starting to see a little bit of color in the foliage. Or I have a brain tumor. I'm told that some of the trees that flash too early are often the unhealthy ones. Trees are like the rest of us in that way, the ones that aren't able to get the best nutrients or are too badly diseased basically go first, while the healthy ones, unless they get plowed into by a bus, get a longer life and go more in their time. Except that we humans (if you'll let me be so presumptuous) don't get to do it all over again a few seasons later, because God is either very cruel or very kind. Let me know if you find out first.

Eventually, over the coming weeks, the rest of the trees will finally get together and go out in in a grandly choreographed stage show of conflagrating colors, and a lot of us will feel strange bursts of happiness and euphoria as a result. Which is another way that Autumn trees are not like dying people. When human beings go out en masse, we don’t get those special feelings. I could probably revisit the bus comment here.

Wait. This was supposed to be a sweetly intended meditation on a newly entered Fall. It's getting away from me.

I honestly don’t have a segue from the previous paragraphs to this one, but if you follow O.T.I.S., then you know that my wife takes most of the pictures that I use. And that's been true of this site so far as well, with the big exception being the Halloween candy post. She has her standards, I guess, and Cap'n Crunch just doesn't meet them.

She's currently posting a series of her own pictures from Autumns past and present on her Tumblr page, With Love and Squalor, featuring all the Fall foliage, orange gourds, and spooky stuff that she can fit into her camera lens. So for those of you, like me, who are getting impatient for Mother Nature to come out of her dressing room, or if your state tree tends to the palm, cactus, or evergreen, then you have every reason to check it out. If you have a Tumblr account, feel free to follow her.

Anyway, here's some more Fall, courtesy of my wife. Or Autumn, I guess. I never know which one of those words to use. No other season has a synonym. Speaking of confusing, I just spent 10 minutes on Google and still can't figure out conclusively if a cactus is a tree...and for some reason I really don't want to take Joni Mitchell's word for it.