Just a walk around the block today. So many of the leaves are still yellow, not yet red or orange, and the air feels mild still. I’m looking forward to the biting chill of winter, frosty breath and big scarves and knuckles that crack with the cold. But for now, the virginia creeper is mottled green and red, on the cusp of changing. On the pavement, fallen yellow leaves are tiger striped with brown and green, wet at the edges from the night damp concrete. The big white, spring feeling flowers of a hubei anemone splurge from an overgrown flowerbed in an alleyway.
Down beside the railway tracks, bright orange nasturtiums have escaped from someone’s garden and gone rogue amongst the leaf mulch. The slightly shriveled red-orange berries of a cotoneaster bush add clusters of brightness to the flat green of its leaves. Beneath a tree, white specks of sweet alysium, also called sweet alison, spread out, points of light amongst thick leaved clover. The sky is pale and I don’t need a coat and even the drain covers, I notice for the first time, have geometric florals on them. A waft of scent comes from the ivy on a wall and a fig tree splays wide yellow hands to the sky. We stop to look at a smokebush, it’s leaves a press of gold and brown and burgeoning red, and my mum, who no longer has words for most things, smiles and says ‘copper.’
Bonnie Radcliffe 