Fall arrives reluctantly in Louisiana.

Instead of the cool autumns I grew up knowing in Ohio I’ve learned to expect steam rising from hot pavement during a late September rain.  Rather than shivering at football games with my hands wrapped around a cup of hot chocolate I’ve had to adjust to wearing flip-flops and shorts well into October.   And instead of expecting falling leaves to carpet the ground in color I’ve come to appreciate  that color happens in other ways.

Today it happened in the median of an ordinary road outside a favorite restaurant in Shreveport.

And so I post this for all my friends in South Dakota and other points north as the snow blankets them this weekend.  I miss winter but that missing is tempered by all this gorgeous color on an October day….and the fact that I don’t have to rake or shovel any of it!

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

~Claude Monet