Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

I went in search of the last vivid colors of autumn at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum earlier this week and was not disappointed. The trees are still singing their ode to fall.

There is still color to be found though it is ephemeral and fading. Although most of the trees were faded and brown and had dropped most, if not all their leaves, I found several little patches of paradise where the colors sang out.

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

— MARY OLIVER