Traffic was appalling today, so I came home via surface streets, a convoluted path that leads me from the Shallowford Road exit to Dresden Drive cutting across Buford Highway and Clairmont Road, cutting across Peachtree and right around the golf course to Mabry to Windsor to Roswell Road and immediately onto West Wieuca, across the top end of Chastain Park to Jett, to Mount Paran, and finally to Cobb Parkway going toward Cumberland Mall. It's a wonderful route on a fall day and the trees are right at peak now. A new complex of apartments and offices on Dresden Drive is afire with young maples the color of pumpkins, one tree looked like molten rubies, and Chastain Park was afire with saffron, coral, and crimson, gold and bronze and bittersweet and scarlet, maroon and purple. I can't even guess how many shades of yellow, orange, and red I have seen this season. The new constructions of stone and brick homes nestle among the trees like comfortable old edifices settled into fall.
In New England peak has come and gone. November is a month of sere grass and the black bones of trees against the sky. I used to make a joke about God having put on His color show of autumn leaves only to be followed by the electric color show of humans celebrating Christmas. Here in Georgia the two overlap: while the trees blaze, men and construction equipment set up holiday lights. The city of Smyrna has been setting up their lights here and there for weeks; the decorations proper are now up and were undergoing final testing this evening when I finally drove through the rotary—the central tree appears to be done in blue LEDs—in preparation for the official lighting next Tuesday. A house on Powder Springs Street was brave with white-lighted bushes and a spiral Christmas tree, and the final sign of the coming season was there on Spring Road for all to see: a Christmas tree lot complete with pines and firs.
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