Early Morning as We Return to the Lake

6:53

Fall Leaves

Fall Colors on Lake Chautauqua

A wild swirl of colors in the sky this morning, as the sun begins to color the eastern sky.  Threatening clouds compete with rising pink, a masterpiece of an early morning sky. It's good to be back in my living room, with a view, watching the sky change, the wind pick up, the sky lighten, the leaves fall, covering the lawn,

Yesterday turned out to be a lovely day for a drive back to the lake from Darien.  We left early, around 6:45 to avoid the traffic and made it in seven hours, arriving home around 1:45. The leaves were still visible on most of the trees, like the previous Thursday, with the Catskills still yellows and greens but as we got near the lake, the colors became more pronounced, lots of reds mixed in with orange, green and yellow, the peak no doubt.  The smell of winter, however, is in the air, a cold that chills the bones, a wind, and bare trees occasionally in the woods.

We unpacked quickly, as we had brought little with us, a change of clothes, and within a half hour, we were sitting down with the Leonards, having Turkish tea, as the afternoon settled into dusk.  They said the weather had been wet and windy over the weekend, though Tuesday was fine.  They are leaving for winter on Friday, so they will be the last of the summer residents to head home.  We will miss them.

Evie made a quick dinner of Italian sausage, mushrooms, and pasta sauce, served over spaghetti noodles, along with an abundant salad, as usual.  We got caught up on some of the shows we had missed, both John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and The Good Wife.  It's nice to have something you enjoy on the tube rather than the usual talking heads or shows for idiots.  Sorry, I know I sound elitist.  It is amazing how different are the tastes of our friends and family.  A show we might hate they might love and vice versa.  Who can account for taste...viva la difference I suppose.  I continue to work my way through Christopher Hitchens' autobiography Hitch 22, a slow read for some reason.

I did remember a quotation from a news program from last night which I found perfect.  It's from a pollster about how various parties respond to his polls: “When you give conservatives bad news in your polls, they want to kill you,” he said. “When you give liberals bad news in your polls, they want to kill themselves.”  Take this any way you like.