Paksworld

With the book away, and many undone things to accomplish, what’s the next step?   The day after its departure, the tree removers came and took down three trees in the back yard, none of which I was happy to see go, though they were dying branch by branch and endangering the house or a neighbor’s.   Lack of them completely changed the yard as a wildlife habitat (much more sun, much less overhead cover from the winter hawks and falcons) so most birds disappeared for most of the following week.   In the meantime, the oaks went into full color change, two weeks later than last year:

These are on one branch of one red oak, and show the variation in how these leaves change, some going directly from green to red and some transitioning through yellow.  We have planted many collected acorns from oaks we saw that had fall color we liked, and now have quite a few that come in all the colors of native oaks, from golden-copper-orange to the darkest purple-red.   The effect of sun through the thicker oak leaves is very different from the softer glow through thin, matte-finished maple.   Sparkles of sunlight glance off the glossy upper side, while vivid color shows through the underside, so the tree looks very different depending on which side you’re on, relative to the sun.

The whole trees show striking color differences as well:

On extreme left, a darker tree in red behind a copper-orange one.  On the right, another red, with a darker red behind it (more purple-red.  All these would look brighter if seen backlit rather than front-lit.

This shot of part of the front yard, shows a number of oaks–the strong trunk in foreground is of a particularly dark red one; then the lower backlit & shadowed branches of a larger gold-orange oak, and across the driveway some of the red ones in the fencerow.    So much for “no fall color.”  Much of our fall color has been destroyed by developers scraping land bare: not just the “scrubby” oaks” but the “brush” which has flameleaf sumac, rusty blackhaw viburnum (dark shiny red leaves),  dogwood (soft purple–vivid when backlit), Texas ash (red and yellow both), green ash (golden yellow), and many others.   Twenty-thirty years ago, most of these turned at about the same time; now they’re more spread out and the oaks around here are weeks later than they used to be.    Our experience in planting acorns shows that this gives the young trees better root system than buying trees in a container.   They’re slow growers the first few years, but then they do very well

Enough of oaks for the moment.   On to socks.  After the book went off, I went back to knitting and finished off the turquoise socks for myself two days ago.    The socks for my friend in NY state should have been finished yesterday, but I made mistakes in the toe decreases and will have to rip them back quite a few rows–always tricky with toe decreases.   A new pair went on the needles right after finishing the turquoise pair and is now over an inch and a half long (as the “following” pair, it gets only a few rows a day.)

And ideas…ideas for the next book.  They’re creeping up on me–I can feel their beady little eyes on the back of my brain, but when I turn to look at them, they vanish.   So I’m trying not to look for another week.   Editor has emailed that she expects to get to Cold Welcome in early January, so in another week I will look at it again, take in Agent’s comments, and see what I can do to pre-empt Editor having the same ones by sending her a spiffy new version.  By then firmer ideas for the new book should be showing up in costume, clamoring for my attention.  I hope.   And there’s still cleaning and organizing and more cleaning and so on to do, not to mention finishing that pair of socks for my friend before Christmas, for heaven’s sake.   And learning the Christmas music for church (I didn’t know Stravinsky wrote any church music.  He did.  We’re singing one of his.  It’s quite lovely.)  Ideally, the new book should be Vatta-based.   And something with a naturally quick pace.  And something that doesn’t require the level of research I put into Cold Welcome, because that took a lot of time.    I need something that I can finish in less than ten months, since the deadline for the next book is already set, and I’ll be starting in January and having the revisions and production stuff of Cold Welcome to do as well.  Also politics–next year is a Presidential election, plus many important local elections, and I’m not willing to ignore all that and take no part.