Patchwork of Jewels

 22 Oct 2024

A month ago I lay in bed and looked out the north window, as I do most mornings. All summer the window view is a mass of green maple leaves. But that day I saw a few tiny patches of blue among the green expanse. I realized that my beloved tree was slowly thinning.

By the time we returned from Netherlands, three weeks later, the window view was golden with many spots of blue. This morning it was a veritable patchwork of color: predominantly yellow but sprinkled with pale green splotches, gold trimmed with cinnamon, dark brown limbs and trunk, and brilliant sky beyond.

Toward evening, as Jim and I walked from his coachhouse office to our kitchen, we paused in the driveway with wonder. Our yard was a riot of gold in the late-afternoon sunlight.

I was afraid I would miss my New England autumn, planning a European river cruise for the first 10 days of October. But I’ve been home twelve days and am in the center of the glory. I don’t remember a more beautiful show, but I often say that. Driving to my psychiatric nurse practitioner’s office in Burlington today, the visual feast was intoxicating. Green, yellow, gold, orange, amber, wheat, butterscotch, bronze, cinnamon, and ginger. A hundred hues, tints, and shades. I live in a jewel-bedecked world.