Leaf-Fall

I found the rolled anchovies (with capers, in olive oil) today, and I was a happy shopper. Mac turned me on to anchovy paste decades ago, it doesn't go bad, or if it does you don't notice. But having rolled anchovies meant I cook a couple of pasta dishes I'd been wanting to try. I put anchovy paste in everything, it deepens flavor. I'd never spent much time in the canned meat and fish aisle, and was surprised to see that they still sell canned mackerel. Vile stuff. But also squid in its own ink, and pig's knuckles. I bought a few things, including several cans of anchovies. Moroccan and wild-caught, nothing but fish, capers, olive oil, and salt. Excellent with butter and olives on egg noodles, also good with ripe cheese on a salad. Visions of sugar-plums dance in my head. Acorns falling on the woodshed so I spread a piece of netting at the drip-edge and harvested a gallon. I want to make some acorn/cat-tail pollen cakes. Stored correctly these would keep for a long time. Temperature and moisture have very little to do with leaf-fall, it's mostly a length of day issue. I've never understood why certain trees (exceptions to the rule) drop all their leaves at once. There's a maple tree on Mackletree, isolated and hanging over the road, that always does this. I've never actually witnessed the event, which must happen fairly quickly (a couple of hours?) but I've seen the evidence several times: a pool of leaves mirroring the diameter of the crown and undisturbed by traffic or wind. Granted, there's not a lot of traffic on Mackletree, but there must be 30 vehicles a day, and the vortex of a passing vehicle is quite strong, leaves collect quickly at the edge of the verge. Twice I've been the first vehicle to view the scene. It's quite a strange sight. Three or four inches of undisturbed leaves in a rough circle. The mechanism of leaf-fall is fairly well understood, the hardening off of the bud for next year is preparing for winter, connection to leaf is severed, the leaf falls. The very idea that all the leaf buds severed connection at the same time is staggering to me. I follow the life cycle of a few trees, maybe a hundred of them, on a regular basis, mostly because they mark certain places; on the driveway, for instance, there are seven trees that I always notice, two of them are dead, which only increases my interest, two of them afford a view of the hollow, and the others are trees I lean against to gain composure. Any of the three ways I drive out are marked by certain trees, the trip into town, in town even, the city trees, the maples along the riverbanks, that survive the worst we can throw at them. At the house, I have to stop and count, there are at least 20 trees that I monitor fairly closely. Two in particular, a poplar out front and a red maple out the window where I write. Both of them are coppiced from the ice-storm, 12 years ago, and they're doing well. I could harvest them as firewood tomorrow, and let them re-grow. I prefer to just watch them, clear the underbrush maybe once a year and let things run wild. I don't want to interfere.