Tag: Portland fall

Fall Beauty

October 23, 2025

Dear Liza,

Our Portland Fall has kicked into colorful overdrive this week.

I love this time of year, with the cooler temperatures and rain giving abundant permission to stay inside with books, yea, and kittens. Calm is easier in Fall than in frantic, growing Summer.

It also feels like Shakespeare weather. I read through the sonnets and found the one that had been tickling my brain. I have taken the liberty of modernizing the language and cutting two lines which leaned a bit too heavily on death for my taste.

Rewritten Sonnet 73

That time of year you may in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon these boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me you see the twilight of such day

After sunset has faded in the west.

In me you see the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of my youth do lie,

As the bed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This you  perceive, which makes your love more strong,

To love that well which you must leave ere long.

And before you worry, I am happy and well. Just a bit older and Autumn-introspective.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Come, Little Leaves

Dear Liza,

Fall is on its way to winter. The trees are getting barer, the piles of leaves are turning to crackling chips or slippery layers, depending on where they sit. My leaf-picture taking days are limited.

My Aunt Barbara Evens posted this poem on facebook. I wish I had known it when I was teaching Kinderbloom…I think the kids would have liked it.

It is called Come, Little Leaves, and it was written by George Cooper.

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” Come, little leaves, ” said the wind one day,
” Come o’er the meadows with me and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold,
For summer is gone and the days grow cold. ”
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Soon as the leaves heard the wind’s loud call,
Down they came fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the glad little songs they knew.

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” Cricket, good-by, we’ve been friends so long,
Little brook, sing us your farewell song;
Say you are sorry to see us go;
Ah, you will miss us, right well we know.

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Dancing and whirling, the little leaves went,
Winter had called them, and they were content;
Soon, fast asleep in their earthy beds,
The snow laid a coverlid over their heads.img_1498.jpeg

 
I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Love,
Grandma Judy