Autumn check in

Autumn on campus is so pretty!

Of course I know leaves come from trees but it seems like it’s always been leaves on tree -> leaves on ground. I don’t know how this is the first time I’ve ever seen a soft rain of leaves. I also never knew vines could turn red. Red blooms over them like vivid watercolour, taking over their usual lime green, and dusky purple stains their undersides. The brick wall behind them is lit a bright syrupy orange by the warm afternoon sun. Underfoot are gum leaves of pale pink and dusty ochre, coated with a weird sprinkling of stuff that looks like elongated white dust. My brain goes to short skinny little white worms but I shut that image off before it gets too far. (If I had better nature vocabulary I would be able to describe these things better I swear.)

There is one tree that I walk past every time I go to campus that has been growing on me. Its leaves are a brilliant lime green that contrast with the dark trunk, shaped like fat ovals that taper into two pointed ends. ~I am so proud of that description since I can never manage to capture the shape of a leaf and I’ve written the same phrase in about three different pieces of writing since I came up with it a couple of weeks ago.~ A few days ago when I was walking home from the train station, I saw in the front garden of a random suburban house those same fat oval leaves with pointed ends glowing a brilliant lime green against a dark trunk. I was so excited that it was the same type of tree! It felt like magic.

This shows how disconnected I am with nature lol. But I suppose there are firsts for everything.

Occasionally I feel weird about standing there craning my neck staring intently at something mundane, whether that be a brick wall or a tree. Then I remind myself that no one cares what I’m looking at. If I didn’t open my eyes properly in autumn it’d be my own loss anyway.

From your very-happy-with-autumn-on-campus girlie,

Betty