Green-wood in October Snow

It's interesting to see snow lying amongst trees whose leaves have only just begun to turn.

Green-wood was breathtakingly beautiful yesterday. I managed to retrace our steps from two weeks ago, uncannily precisely, from tree to tree, and path to path. Off-path, many times, too. I recognized things as I came upon them: the pine tree with white sap bleeding from cut branches, the beech with nut husks deep around its base, the smartweed I'd photographed then, now buried, but for some bent flowerheads. I found the trees where we'd gathered hen of the woods, and the massive compost pile, which was steaming.

I saw few other people. Several were wandering on their own, as I was; one man with  a map asked me for directions to a tomb - I couldn't help. You're just exploring, he observed. Yes, I said.

I stopped in front of a group of small gravestones because their dates seemed strange. They had all died young. I have been surprised by the relatively long lives that many of our 19th century burgers lived. Then I looked again at these graves' dates -  all dead in 1864 or '65: the Civil War.

The snow damage to trees here seemed limited. Perhaps the wind blew the wet snow from the branches before the load became too great, as it did on our street. Many smaller branches had come down, and had already been moved off the roads, but there is nothing like the devastation reported from Central Park, where 1,000 trees are estimated to have been lost in this one wet-snow storm.

In a week the autumn colours will be perfect, I think. But this uncommon combination of white snow with green and gold and the blue above was wonderful.