First Frost

Last week, two mornings in a row as the sun came up I saw neighboring houses with white roofs, a sure sign of frost. The weather news said it was a killing frost that meant the end of the growing season. Later that morning I was stacking more wood for my daughter and saw that most of her vegetable and flower gardens were finished. The flower in the above photo spoke for them all but I’m not sure what it was. Then just a few feet away the cosmos twins hadn’t been touched. A zinnia had seen better days. I found myself going past the river so I decided to stop and have a look. Since these are mostly silver maple trees along this stretch there was a lot of yellow. The showiest thing about silver maples is the whiteish undersides of the leaves. Otherwise the trees are almost always uniformly yellow in the fall. What I like most about silver maples is their samaras in spring. Just like Santa Claus they wear a red suit trimmed in white fur. But only for just a very short time. I thought I’d…