When I woke up, I checked outside my bedroom window and saw sunlight. The world appears to be aglow. The leaves are patterned with light and shadow and are moving just a bit in the slight breeze. The sun has moved into its autumnal phase and has a cooler light. I stood on the deck for a bit, watched Gracie in the yard and took in the sun but wished it were warmer.

Gracie and I are going to the dump today. It will be crowded. I figure the rain of the last three or four days kept people away. I know I chose to stay home and just kept adding trash to the trunk. I still have one more bag and some newspapers. It will be a monumental dump run.

Nothing much is happening. The only people I saw this week were cashiers. The phone was my chief means of communication with family and friends. Nothing much was happening with them either. Either we are all quite boring or we are just slowing down to get ready for the oncoming winter, the inside season.

One branch of leaves on one of the trees in the backyard is orange. None of the other leaves have changed so this stands out among many. I wonder why.

When I was a kid, I loved the leaves changing color this time of year and never really cared why. It was enough for me that they were beautiful and so many colors. I knew the shadows of trees and the shadows of my friends and me on our walks to school would be different somehow, but I never cared why. All of it was part of the landscape, a part of the changing season and that was enough for me.