Clump #70:  Clear out bag of trash from former shoe pile.

This site has, up until now, been free of coarse language.  I’m sorry to offend any delicate readers with the following paragraph.

My daughter has a good friend from high school whose mother used to call the store, “Linens ‘n Things,” “Sheets ‘n Shit.”  (A factor in the chain’s demise?)  Sometimes the coarsest word is the most descriptive, so I’ve been thinking of the pile I’ve been dismantling lately as “Shoes ‘n Shit.”   And here’s another pile of it.

This project has made me think about how the influx and outgo of stuff in a house is like food in a body.  And also like the cycles of nature in the world.

My mother and I sit outside and watch the changes in season with these two maple trees above us.  We have been charting their progress and find it fascinating that the tree on the right was all leafed-out in the Spring, while the one on the left was barely budding.  But now the left one seems to be winning the race.

And here’s another way of looking at “winning” as it relates to autumn.

In my experience, the blazing colors right now are more riotous than mute.

And decay is part of that big, wondrous circle of life.

(Above photo taken at the 2013 Philadelphia Flower Show.)