North Carolina in the Fall

Doesn’t this time of year make you want to go outside and take pictures of every tree in sight? Fall is definitely something I took for granted before moving to Rwanda. This time of year is gorgeous. The cooler temperatures, the cloudless “Carolina-blue” sky, the color-changing trees, the leaves swirling on the road as a car whizzes by…it’s all so lovely.

Something Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) said in You’ve Got Mail comes to mind: “Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”

A bouquet of newly sharpened pencils. Trees changing color. Leaves swirling to the ground. It truly is “the simple things in life” that bring a smile to our faces.

Every now and then the artistic part of my artist personality comes out and I get the urge to create. I started by taking pictures of various leaves scattered about the yard…

 

And then I got really into it and painted a “pinky-print” tree…

I painted the tree with a brush and then used my pinky for the leaves.
And, no, this is not a Pintrest idea. 

 I used the leaves I had earlier collected and made a collage of sorts, but didn’t like the finished product, so I stripped the canvas and created this instead…

Like the leaves that are sent flying by a passing car, my life continues to chaotically fly around while a “car” drives by and then settle for a few moments, only to erupt into the mad swirling when the next “car” comes along. But, in time, the dead leaves will disappear and before I know it, I’ll begin to see new buds and growth on the trees…on my tree.