Gathered, Wrapped and Taken Home

This is how a favorite stopping place along the Rosetta road in the Lanark highlands looked a week or two ago, round bales of hay and rippling stubble, trees along the perimeter of the field still wearing their green leaves, pellucid blue skies and wispy clouds overhead.

Now the hay has been carted home to the barn, the stubble has faded, and the trees are turning. Goldenrod and Michaelmas daisies bloom along the verges, and they host blissful colonies of bumbles and wasps, but companion weeds and grasses are going brown and scattering their seed to the wind.

There is fog here on September mornings, and the views down and across are magical. Skies are sometimes clear and blue later, but a northern autumn is about clouds and rain as much as it is about anything else, and there are murky and overcast days too. No matter what the weather though, sunrises and sunsets here are spectacular.  Beyond the trees is a valley that seems to go on and on forever, and its cedars, pines and spruces seem float in twilight.