My wife was beautiful.

I never tired of her smile.

Crickets

It's 1:44 am and it's cooler outside than in.

Windows are open.

And it's the sound of cool night, late summer crickets.

North America is so beautiful.

Temperate North America.

Summer day

What a gorgeous summer afternoon.

75 F, sunny, not humid.

Listening to the bigs.

The bush roses that form a sort of hedge next to the house on the same side as the lilacs are in full bloom, white and pink with a few red.

Beauty in August

On the same side of the house as our lilacs we have a pseudo-hedge made up actually of bush roses that are blooming, now, mostly white with a touch of pink.

If I were not a lazy old fat man I would take care of them rather than just letting them and the weeds among them do what comes naturally.

Yesterday it stormed so hard the power went out over several blocks around us and stayed out for close to four hours, I think it was.

When you feel the house getting hot you value your air conditioning all the more.

Crickets

Earlier in the season, a different sort of noise is out there at night.

Frogs?

Different bugs?

Tonight it's midsummer crickets.

It's cooler out than in, and getting cooler, so we have the upstairs windows open.

The beautiful summer nights of the temperate zones of North America.

Of the Eastern Forests of North America.

In Mt Lebanon, PA., a suburb of Pittsburgh.

So like Western Europe.

These are the climate, flora, and fauna that I love.

Growing up in Massachusetts we had no A/C.

The windows were always open in summer, unless it was raining.

There was no A/C at Holy Cross, either, when I was there in the late 60s.

There was at some of the buildings I had classes in at Duquesne in the mid to late 70s, after I left the army.

But not all.

Nor at most of the buildings at Pitt, in the early 80s.

Open windows, all the time.

And people crushing out cigarettes on the hardwood floors with their shoes.

Talking about Plato or Wittgenstein.

Tomorrow it will be Spring

An extraordinarily mild winter is, perhaps, the upside of global warming.

It's an ill wind, as they say.

Dogwoods and magnolias are blooming around the neighborhood.

Daffodils and crocuses are nearing their peaks.

Lilacs are just budding.

Light snow expected today, tonight, and tomorrow.

No accumulation.

Then back to daytime highs in the 60s.

A rain of leaves

There is a row of giant maples parallel to my street, behind the houses, the trees and the houses of an age together.

They have all been holding out, their leaves turning through pale green to bright yellow, as trees of other kinds have shed and gone nude.

But two nights of hard November frost have set them off, and all up and down the row, from every tree, their leaves are falling like some gentle, steady, golden snowfall in the autumn sunshine.

Nature imitates art

The big maples have finally turned and the whole world looks like it was designed by French Impressionists.

Every leaf a pure, pale green, green and brilliant yellow, yellow, or yellow edged with red, edged with brown, the trees are flaming and the yards beneath them are gorgeous carpets by Monet or Renoir.

Only a few hours of clear sun a day, this late in the year, but it doesn't matter; these colors, though beautiful in sunshine, are made for subdued light and rainy days.

What a feast for the eyes!

I remember one year ago, looking out our back window, I wrote of these maples and their leaves.

That day I started a new novel, John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra.

Wonderful book.

Snow a bit early this year

We are already having our second snow to cover the ground.

The first was at the beginning of the month.

The leaves on the maples behind my house were brilliant yellow, then.

Those still on the trees are a bit shriveled, now.

And orange in the falling snow.

Update.

A storm coming Tuesday and into Wednesday.

Off to an early start.

Appointment in Samarra

The first few pages of John O'Hara's novel put me in mind of winters in small-town Massachusetts, where I grew up.

I don't recall it being that snowy, usually, at Christmas, so I wondered how typical that could have been in 1930, a hundred miles outside Philadelphia.

But I remembered how quiet it was the morning after a heavy snow and the muffled sound of chains on early passing cars, just as he described it.

And I looked out my bedroom window about 7:30, Saturday morning, and saw a golden snowfall of early November leaves from the giant maples behind the house, not five miles as the crow flies from downtown Pittsburgh.

Suddenly, the doleful measures of Autumn Leaves started up inside my head, and I hurried to turn off that unwanted song.

Because it wasn't sad, no more than that morning snow and that sound of muffled chains.

And it was just as beautiful.

O'Hara's prose, by the way, is very fine.

Update, Sunday, November 10th.

Just finished, maybe 26 or 27 hours after starting.

That is one fast book.

One heck of a story, wonderfully written.

Update, Tuesday, 11/12.

This morning I brushed two inches of snow off the car, and scraped off the ice underneath it.

So much for that beautiful golden snow of maple leaves.