Legend has it, if someone can solve the autumn puzzle and return each leaf to its proper place upon the tree, she or he will be granted their dearest wish. I’m not sure how many, if any, have succeeded, but more than once I’ve been tempted to try.
Paige and the not-so-boogeyman
She peeked over the edge, hoping to count the rings in the stump and figure out how old the tree had been. She never expected a goblin to be staring back at her. With a shriek, she ran and hid behind the nearest tree.
“Wait! I’m sorry! I know I’m spooky-looking, but I never meant to scare you!”
The girl poked her head out from the tree, taking another look from her safer distance. The monster’s mouth opened into a terrible, splitting gash, but she supposed it wasn’t his fault. “Have you ever lived under a bed?”
“No, just this old stump.”
“Do you know the boogeyman?”
“Never heard of him.”
She took a step towards him. “Promise you won’t eat me?”
“I promise.”
“Okay, then.” She hopped over and grinned into his horrible face. “I’m Paige.”
the blush of the red maple
“Dad, how come some trees turn red like that?”
“They’re shy.”
“Shy?”
“Yeah. It’s autumn, and everyone knows all the leaves fall off the trees in autumn. Look, some of them have already started.”
“So?”
“So, the trees know they’ll be naked soon. The shy ones are blushing.”
the spoils of autumn
The leaf looked around, bewildered. One moment he was wafting on the breeze at the end of his favorite branch, the next he tumbled down into some sort of wet impressionist painting. Sure, he had a few friends with him, but still. He didn’t imagine the painter would be glad to see a bunch of renegade leaves stuck in his painting after it dried. Arms and legs would come in handy at a time like this.
the trouble with pregnant tomatoes
The gardener muttered to himself and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Tomatoes aren’t supposed to get pregnant.” He’d tried some of those newfangled heritage varieties with that hippie fertilizer his son was always going on about. Organic – that’s what he called it. The gardener shook his head. “All-natural,” his son said. Yep, he bet. Lotsa things were natural, he reckoned, didn’t mean he wanted his tomatoes gettin’ knocked up.
salamander umbrellas
“Raining again, ” said the salamanders, and they all popped open their umbrellas.
life in the clouds
Every day, before getting dressed, she tucked her dreams into a secret cloud she hid in the back of her dresser. There they were safe from the discouragement of the day, the darkness of storms, and the heartbreak of growing up.
They clustered together, but they never grew tangled. They held each other up, but they never held each other back. Once or twice, a dream slipped away and came true. Those dreams were whispered about in hallowed tones.
Most of the dreams spent their whole lives inside their little, secret cloud. She took them out at night and followed them through the jungle of her slumber. These were the ones that she loved best on the far side of her life, the ones she shared with her children and her grandchildren. Dream by dream, she passed them on.
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the sap, the tree, and the lioness
Sap dribbled from the gash, as tawny in color as the eyes of the lioness who made the wound. She still slept in the tree’s shade, and he couldn’t help but wonder at the unfamiliar beast, so much bigger than the domestic cats that often frequented this part of the forest.
The old tree couldn’t know her as the old lioness who escaped when the zoo truck which carried her broke down not far from there. He couldn’t know how much danger she might be in. Nor could he knew she would never be able to survive on her own. He just kept her cool until the zoo folk arrived and took her home again. He often wonders what became of her.
who’s the crabbiest of them all?
Today’s post is an excerpt from my book The Incredibly Truthful Diary of Nature Girl. If you’d like to know more about it, you can click here or here. Enjoy!
I had the whole day to myself so I wandered near and far. I discovered a gnarled old crab apple tree standing alone in a tiny clearing. Her boughs were drooping heavily beneath the weight of her fruits, and the sun shone upon her like a halo. It was all I could do to settle into the wild grasses and write of her.
A glow of happiness hangs about her and the birds have come from near and far to bathe in her ancient wisdom and sample her delicious fare. She greets them stoically, lilting a little in cool breeze. Her crab apples are almost ripe and I am tempted to gather a few to make jelly.
“What did you write?” she suddenly hissed as she sent a broken twig whirling at my diary.
I could only look at her aghast. I should never have written that bit about the jelly.
“I know what it is! I can hear it humming in the air while your scribble with your girl script. You wrote me beautiful and kind!”
I nodded silently.
“I am not beautiful and kind! I am terrible to behold, heartless, and cruel!”
“You don’t want to be beautiful and kind?”
“No,” her ancient boughs tossed about in indignation and perhaps a little bit of wind, sending the birds to wing. “I must be terrible and vengeful or else these awful birds will eat all the fruit I’ve spent all summer bearing. Greedy fools! All they want is my fruit but my seeds need it to grow into good strong trees! What good do they do me?”
“They do eat your fruit, but when they…um, excrete your seeds are scattered near and far, and many of them fall in excellent places to grow.”
“Excrete?”
“Well, they don’t eat sunlight like you, but they can’t store everything they’ve ever eaten either – they would explode! So instead they keep what they need and excrete the rest,” I fumbled to explain.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Perhaps, but it offers as good a growing place as the fruit you’ve made for them, and they can travel within the bird a very long distance before they find the ground again.”
“Harrumph! And I suppose you think that it’s a good thing that I don’t get to watch them grow, do you?”
“Well, I never thought of it that way,” I conceded.
She grew quiet and distraught.
“Would you like me to write you terrible and ferocious, then?” I asked gently.
“Yes, if you don’t mind.”
The crab apple tree grew into a twisted monstrosity out of the earth. Her bark was thick and gnarly like something dead and dried up in the sun. The fruits she offered were as sour and spiteful as humiliation and defeat. Even the Wind was frightened to tickle her leaves, so they, too, grew bitter and lifeless in their stillness. Sun-worshipping clouds shielded the sun from her ugliness day after day for fear that the sight of her would pain that glowing orb of life.
Only the most foolish of birds or deer would dare to eat her vengeful fruits, for as soon as they were in their gullets, the fruit would twist the stomach into terrible cramps of agony. Not until the animal wished for death would they be well again.
Her early flowers were not the gay blossoms of spring, but rather a veil of tears from a funeral; full of the essence of despair. In autumn her leaves did not turn into beautiful crimsons or yellows, but merely crumbled into ashy dust in the absence of the Wind. A clearing lay about her in the forest, for no tree could find any peace as her neighbour and the forest itself drew back in horror of what they had discovered in her heart. She threatened them with fire if their boughs got too close, and poisoned the soil for their offspring. The whole of the forest was frightened of her, and no living creature ventured near.
“Is that better?” I asked her.
“Muchly, now be off with you before that song in your heart brings the chickadees along.”
The crabby apple now satisfied, I picked up my diary, but not before a sparrow lit upon her branches and helped himself to her fruit. I could hear her grumbling long after she was out of sight, and I tried very hard not to smile.
Jennifer Shelby 