Few birds are more beautiful (“precious”, my mother would say) than these “snow-birds”, an apt appellation long before Audubon captured their soft beauty with watercolors and pastels. Earlier this week the large weeping birch at the east end of Squire Valleevue Farm was occupied by the early migration of an enormous “murder” of crows and an even grander “murmuration” of starlings. With my approach, the syncopated chatter erupted into cacophonous cries as birds abandoned the tree in a burst, leaving behind a lone Junco, seemingly unperturbed and perfectly amenable to a few photographs.

I love the return of Juncos to our feeders each winter but rarely spot them roosting outside the neighborhood. I think the gentleness of the bird in this image is not unlike the soft texture of small birds Audubon painted with watercolors and pastels. See what you think.

Reminding us of nature’s caprice, the arrival of a brief cold front 10 days ago, accompanied by the usual suspects (rain and wind gusts), was sufficient to strip much of the color from the slopes above the Chagrin river at the intersection of Fairmount and River Roads. The panorama below is a composite of 12 photographs taken a day later as maples, poplar, exposed oak and sycamore were left bare. Cherry and beech had lost their leaves a week earlier.

Returning this afternoon after yesterday’s (Sunday, November 15) heavy winds, all that remain are the bones of black oaks (right foreground) gesticulating, flanked by ghostly sycamores and random pockets of spruce and white pine. These slopes rise above the river to the east and west to form the Chagrin Valley, creating some of the most spectacularly iconic landscape in the country. And, with their mercurial personality, the trees anchor our affinity for nature as they remind us of its impermanence.

                                                 “September”

My memory of Septembers in Northeast Ohio are of crystal skies, softly filtered sunlight and lengthening shadows, a month as temperate as its equinox implies. The image here, taken September 8th, 2012, as I walked the center path of Squire Valleevue Farm’s eastern meadow depicts a very different month, a portent of seasonal change. Stratocumulus clouds on the trailing edge of a cold front swept through that morning auguring an early winter. And in a moment of nature imitating art, the landscape bore resemblance to layers stacked in a Rothco painting, a study in color, horizontals and horizons.

This was the rare and restive September day with uncharacteristic temerity, an abruptness and “matter of factness” foreshadowing change, where the transition of seasons is rarely subtle. Even September with its few discordant days, skies prematurely brooding and bracing, the meadow waiting, a renascent source for life through each season. And still, most of the month a contrast, a nostalgic time when tall meadow grass makes its final surge then rests weary upon itself. Blue asters, tenacious through their last days, liatris and ironweed bending reluctantly, folding and fading, their roots and rhizomes anchoring the meadow through time.

I’ve often thought September in Cleveland to be a mix of memories and wistful, melancholic longings for another place or for past friends and family. The barn, its weathered sides and growing clefts reminding us of changes ahead; each season – life’s measure and mystery.