Autumn Pond

It was a gray still day on Saturday, the kind of day when the colors of fall are especially vivid. The dark sky, translated as a somber pond surface, provided a quiet backdrop to the bright reds and yellows of Filipendula rubra.

The reflection of yellowing birch leaves was nearly as crisp a reality as the floating fallen leaves.

A dark tree, with its leaves still clinging, hovered above yellowed leaves highlighted on dark water.

The seedhead of an Obedient plant is a bright crimson exclamation point, a cooler red than the warm red-oranges above.

Vivid greenish yellow pods of waterside irises are bursting open to show their seeds.

Finally, on a bright day a week before, autumn ferns glow against the blue of a reflected sky. Each kind of weather has its own variety of beauty; with November coming, with its bare trees and gray weather without the brightness of snow, I have to remember that something lovely can be found even on the dingiest of days.