I am writing from Quebec, where I am spending a few precious days visiting my family. The weather has been gloomy and dark with frequent rain. What saves the landscape from total bleakness is, of course, the colors of the leaves. Most of the reddest ones – the sugar maples – are down now, but there are a few left.  I also love the salmon and yellow colors. They light up the streets and the forest and make everything seem so much brighter.

Who needs the sun?

See those sticks in the photo below with telephone numbers on them? They belong to snow clearing contractors, who mark the edges of their customers’ driveways with long sticks so they don’t wreck the lawns when they plow the snow. They always print their names and phone numbers on them – free advertising.

Nearly every driveway has these.

Here, you pay for snow removal monthly, or you don’t get any at all. Your options are: hire somebody or buy a snowblower – and not one of those dinky electric ones, either. There hasn’t been a hard frost yet, and I miss the usual late October nip in the air. But it’s coming…..