oh, leaves

reminds me of home
the north side of my house growing up was covered with ivy.
sadly i never captured its autumn glory while i lived there.

i can't seem to stop taking photos of the trees this fall. i'll even pull over whilst driving somewhere to take snaps with my digital cam. and i've already gone on three "official" photo outtings with my 35mm cam.

i try to tell myself that i don't need yet another photograph of a glowing, glorious tree. yet God chooses to pour out His creativity year after year, tree after tree, without tiring or thinking it "too much" - so who am i to stop enjoying and documenting just a few more of His greatest triumphs?

oh, leaves
really wanted to take a picture laying in a bunch of leaves,
but figured a public curb was more acceptable than a stranger's lawn. :)

same temperature

i realized something today when i walked out into the cool autumn morning, dressed in jeans and long sleeve shirt and wrapped in my chunky brown sweater. this is the exact same temperature i run out into wearing shorts and tshirts in the spring, exclaiming about how warm it is. bizarre.

gratis

tim preached on gratitude today. after finishing "the hiding place" on friday, i have a better understanding of what that really means. and how important it is in all things - big or small, hard or easy.

like walking home from church, crunching through leaves. my heart was buoyant. was it the sound of crunching leaves? no, a bit too crackly -- not the warm, rich crackle of a fire, just crackly. then, i caught a whiff of fragrance as i crunched through them. that smell. i love that smell. i thank God for thinking to let the old fallen brown leaves, which no longer look beautiful and now seem a mere annoyance to most adults, to have such an inviting fragrance.

i've never understood how some people can be unmoved by nature. its beauties and mysteries - so wide and deep.

leaves

what is it about autumn leaves? every fall i am amazed at the colours. today i was walking past several trees whose leaves were strewn about the grass. i kept stopping to pick up different leaves that caught my eye. i'd look each one over and then let it fall again. i wished i could look at every leaf; they all deserved to be seen individually. i continue to think about how i can save them. a couple years ago i laminated a few, hoping they'd retain their colour, but they still faded. they truly are around for just a season. you can't create them in a hot house. and that'd miss the point, anyway -- it's the large scale, the random placement, the surprise blast of colour around a corner, a whole block lined with multi-coloured trees, lawns strewn with multi-coloured leaves, clouds of multi-coloured trees covering a cityscape. perhaps it's the momentary nature that makes it so wonderful.