WATCHING THE LEAVES FALL

Once someone told me he was bored, just sitting, watching the grass grow. Today, sitting at the computer, I'm watching the yellowish maple leaves fall, trying to decide if it is snow or rain falling. I think it is sleet, pushing me into hunker-down mode, wishing it was spring. Neighbors have piled leaves all along the sidewalks, which the town is supposed to vacuum up. One year it rained and froze the piles for the entire winter. My mind goes back and pictures the annoyance it was then, assuming it the same this year.

There is a black roof top on a garage, two houses behind me, speckled with yellow leaves, gradually filling like a puzzle. Every once and a while a breeze blows more leaves down, covering more of the roof. Ah, that white stuff is beginning to accumulate. The temperature is 38 degrees. I tell the white stuff to melt! Like our current Administration, it ignores me and keeps piling up until the roof is now all white. The color of the leaves has gone just as our Autumn is fading.

The TV tells me that this is one of the busiest travel days, listing all the negatives of travel. I hunker down more and wrap myself in warm clothing, grateful that I don't have to fight the world outside right now. As I watch the talking heads on TV, misleading us all with their biases and misinformation, I revel that this is just the first snow, on fairly warm ground, rather than cyclone, earthquake, tornado, hurricane, wildfire or blizzard.