Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Notes from a leaf pile -- you gotta love November!

Former Pirate pitcher Steve Blass waxes eloquent on November with a closing flourish from Canonsburg's own Perry Como.

November gives us a chance to slow down and catch up with ourselves. The pressure is off -- from the summer, with all its many options (sometimes, too many) and October when I feel the pressure to see every beautiful leaf in the framework of 10 days or two weeks. Does anyone else feel like summer gets a little stale after July?

And the air ! It's cool and crisp and clean and the best it is all year. Thanks, November, for giving us reason to invent flannel. It doesn't get much better than putting on a plaid flannel shirt and going for a walk down a leaf-covered path when the late afternoon sun casts those beautiful long sideways shadows. The added bonus is that you know there's the guarantee of a cup of cocoa or a glass of wine in front of a fire just to top off your day.

In terms of beauty, the only thing that can compete with that image is a back yard that's been raked for the last time with big leaf piles scattered around it, highlighted by that same, November-only, angle of sunlight. When I've done that, I sit looking out the kitchen window and have a wonderful feeling I've given the yard a good final back-scratching. It's the closest thing I'll get to being a farmer at harvest.

Read it all -

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08310/925335-294.stm

No comments: