Just as we are bundling ourselves in down jackets, hats, gloves, and scarves, the trees are bare. Brown branches stretch to the sky, uninhibited by a covering of leaves. Squirrels run up and down the trunks and sometimes disappear into the cluster of leaves and twigs they call home. I spotted a mud-and-twig-daubed nest in a bare bush, long abandoned but only recently in sight. The girls asked if there where any eggs in it, and I replied that the eggs have been gone since spring. We took a peek inside, and only tiny leaves lined the inside of the nest.

It’s an in between time; a time where all the pretty leaves have been swept to the curb or composted, and the snow has yet to fall. Our temperatures are bitterly cold one day and mild the next. Just the other day, I saw a few snowflakes in the air, but none have stuck to the ground. It feels like winter, but Winter has not officially begun.

It’s odd, but I see beauty in the bare limbs. The way they twist and wind their way up to heaven. Beautiful, really. Even though the boughs are naked.