Friday Ramble - Bees and Asters

Autumn days here are warm and sunny for the most part, but nights are chilly.  The sun doesn't rise until 6:30 so it is still dark beyond the windows as I write this.  We have already retrieved flannel sheets and patchwork quilts from the cedar chest, and there is no doubt about it - daylight hours and warmth are waning, and the northern world is slowly turning its attention toward the long white season.

One craves color in September, not just any old color but shades dazzling, intoxicating and downright riotous. Velvety taupe and cream milkweed pods disclosing fluttering silks in late September are all very well, but give me colors before the snow flies, and hallelujah, here they are.

Think bronze chrysanthemums, burgundy sedums and fall blooming asters, scarlet maple leaves, russet oak and golden birch. Think autumn nights when the sun goes down in flames over our favorite lakes and rivers in the Lanark highlands.  Think cold clear mornings when one's breath sparkles in the air and early light turns the awakening world to gold, erasing for a few moments the shifting ephemeral boundaries between land and water and sky.

In the garden behind the little blue house, my heritage rose offers several hopeful buds, and Michaelmas daisies are coming into flower. When the day warms up, each and every swaying bloom wears a jeweled bumble, a honey bee or a wasp, sometimes a tiny goldenrod spider lying in wait for its next meal too. If only I could capture everything with my lens or find the right words to describe it.