"...and all at once summer collapsed into fall."

Oscar Wilde

Isn't that the way it happens?

 Every year. 

Especially down here in southern Wisconsin.

All of a sudden, it is fall.

And you feel like you must have blinked and missed the lead-up, the slow change, the gradual transition.

Except there isn't one. There is just summer and warm days and warm nights and mosquitos and bees and green leaves and flowers and roses and then, one morning, the gutters are silently and mysteriously full of the most beautiful colored leaves. 

And you wonder when they all changed. And you wonder when they all fell.

Because you are quite certain you had been watching and waiting for just this thing to happen.

I took photos this year at sunset. I usually don't. I usually try for a rainy morning so everything looks wet and clean and there's a darker sky for contrast.

Or I try for a sunny afternoon. 

But it just worked out differently this time. And the filtered, ebbing, evening sunlight did lovely things to the tops of the tree and the shadows on the ground.

And the photos turned out a lot lovelier than I thought they would.

So here's to beautiful, beautiful fall. In all her many glories. May she not collapse too far, too fast.