The backyard and driveway are covered with maple tree seeds. The tree in my backyard made more seeds than usual and they are all over the place. It was fun to look outside on windy days over the past few weeks and watch the little helicopters twirling all around.

Recently read: Cities of the Red Night (William Burroughs). The first two-thirds or so of the book seemed to have a mostly narrative structure, which made for an easier read than the two books of the Nova Trilogy that I read a few months back. But then something switched and I mostly lost the plot. It wasn’t quite as jumpy as the cut-up sections in the Nova Trilogy, but …

There is a tree next to my house. I’m not sure what kind of tree it is, but each year I think it’s dead. It drops its leaves earlier than I would expect, branches fall out of it, etc. Each year I’m sure that it’s the end.

But, so far, each Spring it wakes up and explodes in almost pure white blossoms. For several days it is spectacularly beautiful, and it remains beautiful as it drops the white petals and the yard looks like it snowed in the night.

The tree doesn’t have a lot of leaves, and what it has are often covered in rusty spots that look like a disease. Each year I’m sure that it’s the end. But each year (so far!) it makes lots of small, hard red berries or fruits of some kind. The leaves fall, but many berries stay on the tree into winter, although they shrivel up and look like they forgot to fall.

At some point, the snows come. And then birds flock to the tree and eat the berries. They come in groups, sometimes robins, sometimes other kinds. Turns out that the berries didn’t forget to fall. They were just waiting.

I don’t remember the leaves on this particular tree being so red in years past. Trees all over the area are turning and the nights are near freezing. Had the first frost of the season last week. Time to clean up the garden and start getting it ready for winter.