Fall and falling leaves bring so many memories:

• shuffling through dry leaves that covered sidewalks as I walked to school
• raking huge piles of leaves and then jumping into them until they were reduced to mulch
• or raking the leaves into “rooms” to make a playhouse that provided hours of entertainment
• wandering through the yard collecting pretty colored leaves to dip into wax and put onto a straw wreath for a door decoration
• putting red and yellow leaves between two sheets of wax paper and ironing the paper to preserve the color for a least a little while
• gathering acorns for my mother, who carefully put them into pretty dishes
• looking for wooly worms and predicting the weather by their stripes
• blowing milkweed seeds out of their pods, then bringing the pods inside to make decorations
• looking for ripe persimmons
• searching roadsides for the orange bittersweet berries
• finding my knee socks and cardigan sweaters
• watching shadows stretch across the yards as dusk returned
• gathering clothes from the clothesline in near-darkness as autumns’ winds blustered

I am sure I can think of more to add to the list. But what about you? What memories do the falling leaves trigger for you?