One of the stranger things I’ve discovered since moving to the country is that in the fall you can actually hear the leaves falling from the trees. I take the dogs out at two o’clock or so many nights and it’s very quiet (except for the occasional coyote and the local owl), and even when there is no wind all you hear is a dry rustling as the leaves drift down through the branches.

A few years ago, before I realized that this happens for several weeks every October, I was out at about three o’clock and heard what sounded like running water coming from the eastern edge of our property (where there is, of course, no running water, no water mains, no nothing).  I trooped over there and the sound of water got louder and louder as I approached a large ash tree that seemed to be the source of the sound. When I finally shone my flashlight on the tree, i saw that it was dropping all its leaves at once in a reddish-brown cascade, as if someone had thrown a switch. Amazing.

I had a dream about a spider last night. (I hate spiders, although not as much as I used to. If I see one in the house I usually just ignore it or try to shoo it away.)  But this was a very odd dream.  As you leave our house by the side door, you walk down a path through the fenced-in dooryard and pass through a sort of arbor thingy with built-in seats.  Very cute.  Well, every year a large spider takes up residence in the arbor, and every night all summer long she spins a big web in the doorway of the arbor to catch moths, etc, on their way to the light coming from the sun porch windows.  You have to remember to duck when you go through the arbor after dark or you hit the web and upset the spider, and, since she’s a very big spider, that’s not something you want to do.

So it finally got quite chilly the other night, and when I took the dogs out at about 1 am, I noticed that the spider was gone. Only a few shards of her beautiful web from earlier in the week remained.  It bothered me more than I expected.

Then last night I dreamed that I went into the garage, and there was the spider.  She’d just moved indoors to stay warm.  This is, of course, ridiculous, since the garage is ~30 feet away from the arbor and nature doesn’t work that way anyway.  But it made me happy to see her there in her new web. I wish nature did work that way.