We’ve been getting some much-needed rain lately, which has made the darkening month of November even darker. But that’s okay. Much of November’s beauty seems to lie in the colors and poignance of her dying and disappearing leaves and fruits, which tend to glow in light rain. By mid-month, most of these jewels will be stolen by the angels of death or the hungry wildlife.
Above, you see the colorful death throes of a lonesome fothergilla leaf, once part of a green witch hazel family. Below, you’ll see the insidious emergence of the red fruits of an Asiatic (aka Oriental) bittersweet vine (aka snake), a god-awful killer that squeezes its hosts to death in the perennial fight for sunlight:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 10, 2025.)