Fall in Columbus Circle...? 

Beautiful. As my photos from last year attest.

Fall in our own personal yard this year...? 

Not so picturesque. 

Everything is looking kind of...well...scruffy. Unkempt. Rough.

The 60+ Hostas we divided and transplanted in early September are limp and yellowing. 

The garden plot I tilled, fertilized, planted and faithfully tended finally and sadly succumbed to the toxicity of our yard's soil. (Courtesy of our neighbor's towering Black Walnut tree.) And it is now a barren patch of dirt. 

Our raspberries are gangly and sparse.

 Our mulch is a topographical relief map of holes, hundreds and thousands of holes. (Again, courtesy of our neighbor's towering Black Walnut tree and the hundreds and thousands of squirrels it attracts.) 

Enormous spiderwebs and equally enormous spiders festoon every corner and crevice and overhang, wasps swarm to any and every available drop of water and in general you get the sense that everything is longing for winter. 

To be put out of it's misery. 

And given a break. 

And that includes us.

But for now yard work abounds. My hope is to have things tidied up by Halloween. A rather, at this point at least, seemingly daunting prospect. (I think I will leave the spiderwebs perhaps...)

However, lest I sound too, too, "woe is me" and depressing here are pictures of a few of the literal bright spots that yet remain. Determined. Intrepid. Thriving amid the slow downhill descent of Autumn.

Enjoy!