“These trees have drunk the sun.
Fire-filled, their strength
Breaks into clarion color on the hills —
Maples with a strange new energy
Burn in the wind,
And sumac kindles to a darker flame.
In all the torch-lit wood
Only the blanched ferns are dim,
Crushed beneath the air they break
With a slight sound of foam.”
~Rachel Grant (in “October Death” c. 1929)


Shared by Betty Hanselman
Gardener’s wife