November 6

The temperature dropped to the low 20s overnight, and by morning the thermometer read 18 degrees.

In the driveway, low spots in the asphalt still held small pools of water from an overnight rain of two nights ago, yet these had frozen since last evening. Their surface now revealed crystalline patterns, designs of ice that resembled feathery marks, some that extended for a foot or more.

As the sunrise came, a slight breeze grew gently, stirring the remaining leaves on those trees which autumn had yet to claim. These are the strange outliers about town – the silver maples that line the roadside, with yet full foliage of yellow leaves when all about them have fallen. So too the crab apples and beech, those few we see in yards or fields that inexplicably hang on.

In the warming light, the wind in their boughs causes the leave to fall quickly today, and it is strange to see them dropping nearly as one, when only a whisper of breeze affects in the golden sunlight of morning.

I read once that such trees held bits of moisture in each of the new buds that lay just underneath where the petiole connects the old leaf to the stipule of the branch. In hard frosts, the moisture freezes and expands, breaking the hold of the petiole, though keeping it affixed in the grips of the hardened water. As the tree is warmed in the morning sunshine, the moisture melts enough that the gentle breeze causes all to release and drop to the ground, a shower of late fall color.