Fall Colours

In case you missed it, fall arrived. Fall! It’s almost over. Strange how that keeps happening.

The Toronto library has recently suffered some sort of cyberattack and the entire system is still down. It feels a little apocalyptic, a little Office Space. They’ve resorted to checking books out manually, the tedious copying out of card numbers and barcode numbers. Now that we can no longer put books on hold, we have to visit other branches to see what books are available to borrow.

Whenever we walk into a new branch, it’s like stockpiling the canned goods before a storm. Caleb starts pulling his potential reading material off the shelves, his arms getting lower and lower to the ground. I can see the library staff looking warily at our intrepid reader, as he approaches with his giant stack of books teetering. Caleb, utilizing those precious brain cells—the same ones that somehow cannot be deployed to remember that he has homework or how to conjugate French verbs or which sharps are in a D major scale—has wondered if it means he can now check out more than the official limit of 50 books on his card since there’s no way to tell how many books he has checked out.

In any case, it seems like the fall is in her dusk, the leaves having lost some of their rich gold and red. I’ve been collecting these photos for some time, as they capture some of my favourite shades. These colours. I can hardly bear them. Each year they are incredible and warming and filling and each year they are more than the last. I have been going on lots of walks with the baby but also existing in the outside world, and these leaves, fallen off the tree, dying and decaying, have been welcoming me.

Please enjoy a small selection from my camera roll, and I hope you get a chance to feel a few leaves crunch under your shoes before the snow comes.