Morning Glory

I was about to write about mornings, about being a morning person, but as I gazed at this photo, it reminded me that these flowers are dying, hanging their lovely heads towards the ground, the entwined morning glories faded and shrivelled as October arrives, gently but definitely feeling like fall. 
Autumn is the perfect season because autumn contains so many different qualities, can represent so many different emotions. Sadness, joy, gratitude, anticipation, dread, transformation, hope.
Some of the most beautiful flowers bloom at this time of year, carrying us through the shorter days and cooler nights with bursts of stemmed sunshine. But, see, too, how we face those shorter days and what they mean. Less time outside, petals falling without our noticing. What I did notice while walking the dog after supper the other night was that it really wasn't light enough for walking along the road. It was only seven o'clock but the day was done.
And I did notice yesterday how yellow the leaves of the day lilies have become. Just like that, the garden has given up. It is over for another year. Now I must face the cutting and trimming, the cleaning up and the preparing for winter. Yet that preparation is not just for winter but also for spring. There is a circle we trace through the year and autumn is simply part of that endless, enduring and infinite circle of change.
Remember that at same time we lose the light, we gain so much colour. The reds! The oranges! The yellows!
(Which makes me look up to the window next to my desk to see these colours but the trees are gone, the colours are gone. Not from my anger, though; it glows molten red still. There is a new season for me since the woods were cut down -- a year-long, rest-of-life-long season of mourning.)
Where was I? Autumn. The metaphor for both endings and beginnings.
Most people see autumn as merely an ending -- the end of summer. They see autumn as the beginning of the end -- the coming of winter. Yet winter is as lovely and varied as autumn.  White, too, is a colour. Snow, too, is an invitation.
But that, my dears, is a post for another day, another day that is months in the future. For this day and the next, and for the following weeks, we are inside the perfect season.