Autumn Ramblings

It's the last day of autumn, here. We walk to the shops.

We cross Portrush Road and walk down Percival Street, past the hole in the ground that was once Clayton Aged Care Home. The street trees are not very old. Under them, on the footpath, are shiny red ovate leaves that look like they've been punched out of leather. Some have bright yellow edges, others have startling green veins.

It irritates me that I don't know the name of these trees. That won't stop me from calling them Manchurian Pear. Because that's what I think they are, and I have my reasons.

Now we have turned the corner on to Queen Street. It's quite dark, for two thirty in the afternoon. That's because the street is lined with huge plane trees. At least I think they are plane trees, and I have my reasons. The footpath is littered with fallen plane tree leaves, as big as poppadoms, and as crunchy. The colour of these is ordinary dead leaf brown, but that is something that happens to them after they have fallen off the plane trees.

On the trees, the leaves are a different brown entirely. The glowing brown of rust, the curdling brown of yellow and the fading brown of green. The colour of snakes, the colour of something being not quite right with your eyes, the colour of menace.

Fortunately, we soon cross this street into Wall Street.