Here in Spokane Fall is just around the corner. Tomato and raspberry plants are beginning to dry up, their time is done. Leaves are just beginning to turn on the trees in our yard. Our front yard Maple, lovely green all summer, now sports two bright red leaves.  This tree was a brilliant red when we first saw the house in October, six years ago. I knew I wanted to live here in this house even before we walked inside.

And yet, as slow as our red Sugar Maple is to turn now, this lovely Aspen I saw yesterday at the John A. Finch Arboretum was bright gold and magnificent. I don’t understand how this tree, in the same city, can be so fully turned already, when our own trees are only now beginning their Fall experience.

Regardless, I have to say that we have the most beautiful Fall in Spokane.  I can’t imagine any place being more beautiful than Manito Park in all its Fall splendor, or the campus of Eastern WA University, Cheney, with colorful, ankel-deep leaves to walk through all over their campus. Since Dennis and I both have degrees from EWU, we always plan to go out to the book store on campus and buy ourselves EWU sweat shirts, but each time we go they are closed for some reason.  We’ve tried twice. This year I think I’ll be smarter and call first to make sure the book store will be open.  I think we probably didn’t care in the past, because walking through the fall leaves was our main focus in these mini trips.

The friend and I who visited the Arboretum yesterday, when it was still blazing hot here, decided we must have a re-do in October, when our cheeks are red with the chill and we can wander amidst even more colorful trees in this beautiful and peaceful piece of earth.