I think I promised an Ode to Maple Trees post during one of my fall color raptures and let me just say again that this has been the most stunning year for fall color that I can remember.  (Granted, I’ve only been back in Rhode Island for 5 years – but still! And everyone is saying it.)  The Japanese maples in particular have outdone themselves and are going through the final act of their strip tease now.  They’ve flung their clothes in great heaps on the ground like untidy teenagers but even though we have a compulsion to clean up after them, it’s a pure pleasure to tramp through their room picking up socks.  I remember as a kid I would scan the ground on the way to school looking for the most beautiful, most perfect, orangest, redest, yellowest leaves and I would gaze at my loot and wish I could own/be/eat the color somehow.  This year I had a bit of that same sensation walking under our maples – at times, with the sun at just the right angle, it was like being inside a tube of paint (Alizarin Crimson) and I wish I could “keep” the color somehow – maybe if I repainted the potting shed …  I’m always a little disappointed to watch intense colors fade but I do also love seeing the musculature of the trees uncloaked and stark raving naked.  More on beautiful nudes in a later post, I’m sure.

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