After a few dark days of clouds, fog and rain, this morning was all sharp sunshine. And wind! The river, very blue, was covered in whitecaps, echoing the shards of clouds running across the sky. Lots of gulls hunkered down on the pilings. As cold and hard as the wind was blowing, the leaves aren't quite ready to fall. Each gust brings down a bunch, but no kind of tree is bare, yet, and many are still partly green, though it's a fading, yellowing green. The Japanese maples have turned their claret color and are holding onto their leaves, too. The river was busy this morning, red and green tugs, a black barge, white ferries and a yellow one (they call those water taxies, they have checkerboad stripes on their sides), a red-black-and-white Coast Guard ship, all looking spiffy as though they'd been freshly painted. The runner population has thinned, and the fisherman who, all summer, had two poles going at the end of the children's park pier, seems to have given up. And I'm glad I went out early, because out my window now the clouds seem to be closing in again.