It’s October 20th… that’s Autumn, right? Best to ask the sumacs. They know. Here are the males, in their finery of feathers.
And the females just down the road.

 Not just plumage, but drupes, too, this time. Yeah, those berries. Drupes. Say it out loud. Yeah, that’s how they taste. D..r..u..p..e..s. Nice, eh. But, um. (Yeah, um.) You see, sumacs don’t just live on their own, bolting wild and making a mockery of fence lines and the plans of landscaping architects. They have co-conspirators in this important work. I mean, the filberts. (For our European friends, that’s a great big version of a hazelnut … very tasty, but not near so tasty as a hazelnut, which is definitely the queen of nuts.) Here, have a look-see:

Still feeling like fall here. Very fine. 25 degrees Celsius. Sun coming in almost horizontally. If you turn around, it’s right there in your face, too, as if you were stepping into it. That’s a cool feeling. It’s like you could walk between worlds! Magpies chattering away. Raven and hawk keeping their eye on my wanderings (and their backs to the sun, so they don’t go blind as bats and bump into stray children), but, um. Well, look at this…

Spring!

Male filbert flowers starting their year.

They’ll still be there through the snow, when all the leaves are gone. Faithful, ever-hopeful guys, aren’t they! Love, they say, makes the world go round. This is, I believe, a very good thing.