Falling Leaves

For the past 2 or 3 days there has been a brisk breeze blowing and it has been raining leaves.  Everything is now russet with a few patches of gold and there are huge piles of leaves that are really satisfying to kick your way through.  We can see our neighbors on either side now and from the bottom of the drive I can see the highway, it feels less like we live deep in the woods.

I went for a walk in the Pinery yesterday, it was very quiet, you could just hear the wind in the trees, the odd twig snapping and the endless drift and rustle of falling leaves, I didn't see a lot of wildlife but I have to admit that when I'd been on the trail on my own long enough not to be able to see the visitor centre I started to sing to myself and looked for a big stick to carry just in case.  There's not much of a threatening nature around here but I didn't fancy fighting off a pack of hungry coyotes with my bare hands.  In Hindsight I'm not sure about the usefulness of the stick, perhaps we could play fetch.

Leaves have been falling off the oak trees so fast that it became impossible to see the entrance to the drive as it was about 6 inches deep in them until Ian came today and blew them all into big heaps.  I didn't realize until we moved out here that there is more than 1 species of oak but there are 12 (or maybe 16) found in Canada and we have 7 in this area. They all have different sized and shaped leaves and 1 of them doesn't have acorns - fancy that!  I think that we have some Red Oaks around our house with spikey leaves that grow very big.  The children and I grubbed about in the drifts this afternoon and found these fine examples (the leaves, not the children).

Look out Santa, here comes Rosedolf