Summer's end

It seems that the chaotic lushness and heat of summer always wear me out, leaving me at this time every year looking forward to the sudden drop in temperature, the shorter days, farmers with tractors and farmers with teams of horses beginning to gather in the last of the year's harvests. This season of paradoxes that celebrates death. Trees and fields give up their last energies in a riotous orgy of colors that pass within a few short weeks into dormant stillness. Sounds morbid and maybe it is, but it is what autumn is and has always been for me - a time of excitement and eager preparation for winter's challenge to survive until the next cycle begins.

saturday morning on the patio, 11 9/16 x 8 1/4, graphite and colored pencils