Mr. Garner and I have enjoyed at least a month of morning walks on neighborhood streets bordered with large leathery sycamore leaves.  They are of the perfect size and texture and quantity to provide a satisfying crunch when stepped on, and a superb percussive swish when stepped through.  Along the way, I’ve gathered bouquets of oak and maple and sweet gum leaves to grace our dinner table.

Over the weekend our red oak finished dropping her leaves, so we’ve raked the yard once already. Now as I sit at my desk, the wind blowing through the branches of the enormous pecan tree next door is supplying a distracting display of falling leaves drifting past my window…and the occasional thunk of a pecan on the roof.

Consummate jazz singer

The original french songstress Edith Piaf

And yes, I experience similar rhapsodic reminiscences about leaves pretty much every year –
Where all the leaves are gold… G.K. Chesterton

The falling leaves… You have to hear the Eva Cassidy interpretation…

Damp leaves this day… Emily Bronte’s Fall leaves fall and George Winston’s Longing