The thermometer read 24, no wind whispered, and I stood on the driveway inhaling that fine autumn air. The sky, as blue as a kid’s crayon, shimmered as the sun climbed over the ridge to warm our valley. With maple leaves having already dropped, copper and gold blinded me with their fluorescence. A gorgeous autumn morning.

So quiet, so still, and then I heard it: fall. Fall, the verb.

Warmth from the sun had finally reached the treetops behind our home, melting the frost and knocking the final bits of stubbornness from the leaves. They fluttered and cascaded to the forest floor, scratching branches along the way, swooshing a bit in an unfelt air current. With no other sound to compete, they cluttered and clanked, sounding almost as metallic as they looked.

A blue jay squawked, perhaps alerting the others that summer’s camouflage would soon no longer protect them. Perhaps the jay complained about the first deep, deep frost. Perhaps it called an early morning greeting, to wake up the rest of the flock.

Nevertheless, in a week or two, the trees will be bare of this vibrant splendor and we will enter the second phase of autumn: Stick Season. Lovely for its austere elbows and knees of silver and pewter, Stick Season allows us to peer deeper into the woods, watching wildlife meander through the underbrush.

We watch as boulders appear: big, granite, glacial erratics that we haven’t seen since last winter. We welcome them back, though, obviously, they've been sitting there year-round for thousands of years. With each new layer of fall leaves slowly decomposing, the soil around them gets richer each year. Little critters burrow into that soft, matted fluff, hiding seeds and making well-insulated nests.

Perhaps the weathered boulders shift a bit, or crack apart through the freeze-and-thaw cycles during the year, but for the most part they stay put. Some of these boulders, at least the parts we can see, are much bigger than our cars. We are happy to have them remain where they are.

We admire gravity, keeping all that rock in place, and we dodge gravity as our big old oak trees release their acorns. It’s a hard-hat zone near our wood-yard. We hear those plump, nut-nuggets pummel and ricochet off the wheelbarrow, the log-pile covers, and the car if we've forgotten to move it from the ambush. Sometimes, for only for a second or two, we mistake those gray, lichen- and moss-covered boulders for visiting wildlife. Once we debated the bizarre winter arrival of a 36-inch-long rock under our bird feeder. That bobcat quickly decimated the gray squirrel population that frequents our winter-only bird feeders.

Soon, the white stuff will fall. It will cover those fallen leaves and highlight the boulders. Snow will allow us to see the animal tracks of those that live and forage in the forest behind us.

Some beech and oak leaves will cling all winter to the branches. The sun bleaches them of color and they’ll flutter in unseen breezes making a racket of white noise. Finally, they’ll either slowly tatter to pieces or drop when spring’s new buds push their stubborn selves off the branch.

The morning was really waking up now, the sun higher in that cyan sky. Suddenly I heard it dripping, then raining: Ping, ping, ping. How could that be, without a cloud in the sky?

I puzzled for only a second, then grinned and turned to our house. The sun had finally hit the metal roof. The white layer of frost had melted off the edges and dripped to the next roof. Plunk, plunk, plunk.

The frost shower only lasted a minute or two, and I thought of the fleeting moments of life that we so often miss. Find your minute of wonder. Listen to the leaves fall or the frost melt and drip. Inhale that crisp air in the morning or the sensuous deep funk of decaying leaves in the late afternoon. Embrace that tapestry of color by jumping into the leaf pile you just raked. Or crush one of those leaves in your hand and inhale its fragrance. Soon, it will be gone for another year.

By Laura Richardson, Master Gardener