Blog 3744 – 02.10.2026

Awaiting The Last Leaves To Fall

Each year about this time, I engage in a dance of sorts with mother nature as I await the last leaves to fall signaling me rake up the last of the fallen leaves and clean out all the flower beds to make room for the new growth of spring. It is one of my favorite annual rituals like watching the trees putting on their party dresses in autumn. The last leaves to fall are equally as magical as the first to fall. 

In more northern latitudes like Tennessee, where I grew up, the leaves have usually all fallen off the trees by Thanksgiving and the trees enjoy a much longer winter nap. That is not the case here in Southeast Texas. I have spent over half of my life in Houston, Texas and there have been more than a few winters here where we did not experience a frost let alone a freeze and the trees got hardly a wink, no nap at all.

The trees do not complain, nor do I when fall slips so easily into spring. The little boy in me might miss the “snow days” of my youth and the deep snows of the greater part of a decade I spent working in far Northwest and the upper Midwest where I got to see my boyhood dreams of deep and lasting snow come true.

I do not, like so many, need to retire to Florida nor to a tropical island, I am content with my chosen corner of the world. I do intend as soon as I am able to spend more of my time a little further north and east of Houston where some timber property and a small ranch call to me like those sirens did the sailors in the old stories. Fact is I intend to head there early in the morning to spend a few hours reminding the Universe of my intention, my wish, my dream regarding my ever growing desire to watch the seasons change there.

Your friend and fellow traveler, waiting for the last leaves to fall,

David James White