Happy Wind

Today is blustery. What a fun word to say, blustery. Blustery, blustery, blustery.

Ahem.

We haven't had the usual color change, this year. Granted it is subtler than a New England Autumn, even on a bright year, but it seems like most of the trees have gone from green to nude without any of the usual changing-of-the-gowns.

As bird and I made our way to the chiropractors, we felt the wind shove Rosie (our van), but she held steady in her traces and didn't mind the blow. Leaves skittered across the road - first one, then another, and then entire clans of leafy wanderers dashed across the pavement in search of new places to rest themselves in loamy contentment.

We drive across Buford Dam to get where we need to go - that's the dam that spans the Chattahoochee River, creating Lake Lanier and Atlanta's reservoir. On the lake side, the water is well below full pool (some twenty feet or so) but is still lovely for a lake that shouldn't be there in the first place. Around the lake, trees danced, bobbed, and bowed to the water. There were whitecaps on the surface, and choppy little wavelettes. I miss the sea, I thought, but the lake is lovely.

Once we were home, I let Bird play outside while I cleaned out the back of the van - Rosie was hauling a little extra weight back there and I need the room (I hope) for pumpkins, cider, firewood, and whatever else I find to bring back from Mum's neck of the woods this weekend.

He discovered the joy of crunchy leaves, of shuffling through the autumn grass and kicking up the brown confetti shed by the poplar at the foot of the drive. He brought one to me "Look mommy, a flag!", and it did, indeed, look like a flag. He chose one for himself, his "leaf shield". His old, beat up Tonka truck front-end loader became a mower to mow the leaves.

We both stopped to watch a whirlwind stirring the cauldron of our cul-de-sac, lifting and churning leaves and dust - a happy wind, twirling her skirts around and around, eyes shining, head tilted back, laughing at the brilliant blue October sky, merriment in her every swing and sway.