Empty halls

'S funny, one creates a repository like this, than manages to forget it for years.

Fall's setting in in the Champlain Valley, wet after a whole dry summer, stripping leaves about as soon as they turn. The result is a more subtle display of color, rich rather than dramatic. My favorite this year is soybean fields, swaths of pure yellow in late afternoon sun. The soil is starved enough for water that mud's not generally a problem, even with almost constant rain.

They're's always too much to do as the year wanes. There are certain things that can only be done before ice turns soil to rock and one learns not to neglect them. Pipes want draining, gardens want tending, and summer equipage wants stowing before one has to wade to do so.

I enjoy winter as well as other times, but its coming engenders sorrow and dread and in its heart it seems never to end. It will come and pass as the next year unfolds.