The leaves tumble to earth, carpet the ground. Soon we'll be raking. Extremely near-sighted, I abandon my glasses to hold one leaf after another a few inches from my eyes. I have no need of a magnifying glass. The veins branch from the stem and those branches branch until they are too small for even me to see.
Color saturates the leathery flesh.
Held up to the sun, this flesh is translucent. It glows. . . . Photographing them is a way of taking time to better appreciate a few of them and, in a way, preserving and sharing their beauty. . . . Each one is worthy of praise. Me, I grabbed my camera instead and let the pixels do the talking. . . .