You beat me to it - I, too, have been taking pictures of leaves. I've also started my yearly pick-up and placing of leaves into my telephone book collection. First, I took out all the leaves I'd collected in Minneapolis last year - most with holes in them from the brutal hailstorm in the spring. I haven't had much luck collecting leaves here, because it got really cold and snowed, and the leaves froze before they turned color. So most of them are brown.
But in Seattle...I went to meet Brian as he got off the ship. Here is the ship he spent the last (nearly) four months on:
I drove for two hours through Seattle after I "deplaned" and when I got to the ship, I called Brian and found he was at the airport. Holy God! He was trying to make things easy for me so I wouldn't have to drive through the traffic. Anyway, I went back to the airport, and after that he drove and everything was fine. You know what a good driver he is; he can drive a car full of Drews all yelling out the wrong direction.
We went to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Gardens. We do this almost every time we are in Seattle together. Brian likes to watch boats and ships pass through, and I like to be there with him. First thing, we saw the most interesting blooms on a tree:
I didn't check to see what kind it was, but what fascinating blooms - they looked like plastic flowers. They had plump petals. Enough of that - about the leaves:
Here is the walk alongside the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. That's a drawbridge up ahead, that opens up when a big ship has to come through. The trees were gorgeous everywhere. Then we got closer.
and closer:
It was too much. I actually had to give up picking up leaves because I would have needed a dump truck. I was stunned. I was awestruck. It was amazing. And this was just one leaf experience out of several in Seattle this weekend.
Leaf experiences are fleeting. I think that is part of their charm. They will be gone in an instant, a few hours, a day or two. I had a stack of leaves, but for lack of a phone book (no, I don't lug phone books around on weekends...yet) they dried up into curls. I managed to get a few home in a paper bag. Next year I'll dig them out of the phone book and be delighted once again.
Too funny. We were leafing at the same time. Reminds me of the time we both pruned our Lilac bushes at the same time. Sister!
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That post reminds me that I picked up quite a few leaves when I was in Lake City MN in September. They were just perfect at the church we were in. I had an Italian cookbook (I think I won it at the raffle) anyway I put the leaves in it and they are wonderful and flat but now I can't read the cookbook. Where do you put your flat leaves after they dry?
ReplyDeleteWell, you can move them to another book that you don't care about so much (mine was William Bennett's Book of Virtues) until you are positive they are dry. Every year I get a cardboard box and place last year's dried leaves in it and label it: "Leaves 2008" (depending on the year of course). And someday you'll find something to do with them. That's a whole 'nother post.
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