Is it clichéd to talk about leaves on the first day of October? Is it lazy writing or just being opportunistic when the colours are all around you and your first prompt is nature so why not talk about the leaves?
Honestly, I didn’t notice them at first. Autumn is my favourite season (and for a long time was a name I loved) and though I honoured it’s beginning with a Pumpkin Spice Latte as I usually do each year, it didn’t actually hit me that it was. I’d been so focused on the heat for so long that it was only when I was driving to work that I looked at the trees and noticed how so many of them were nearly finished changing. A smattering of red spreading through the green, as if now that the temperature had finally dropped the trees had to follow suit.
I love the colours of the autumn, and already too many writers have said the same thing but I might as well say it too, maybe writers just like autumn. I love how cloudy the sky gets, unsettled and rolling and how the trees just light up beside it. The dark and light together, how even though it’s cold and damp outside the leaves look like they’re own type of fire, provide a warmth that doesn’t outwardly provide comfort but does inwardly.
I haven’t found someone who doesn’t like the fire of the leaves. They may not like the cold, the dampness, the winter that’s crawling up but they love the leaves. How can you ignore that colour, that brightness, that comfort that they bring?
Sarah O'Connor 