By Corey Sandler

Singer-songwriter Cheryl Wheeler’s beautiful song, “When Fall Comes to New England” says of this season:

The nights are sharp with starlight
And the days are cool and clean

And in the blue sky overhead
The northern geese fly south instead

And leaves are Irish Setter red

The nights and the days and the skies are indeed sharp and cool and blue.

And her description of the leaves is poetry of the highest form.

Of course, there’s a “but” coming; you knew that. But in this annus horribulus, this horrible year, everything is socially distant.

We’re hoping for fresh air and a return to something close to normalcy in coming months. Each night we raise a toast to health, happiness, sensibility, and hope. We can hope.

My terrace garden, 200 feet in the air above Boston harbor, felt the first nip of frost the other night.

There is no official place called New England, but it is usually meant to include the northeast American states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Some of us are willing to grant admission to the eastern part of what was once British North America in Canada including Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador.

In my office, I have spent much of the viral confinement harvesting previously unripened photos of autumns in New England, from New York east and north to Atlantic Canada.

All photos copyright 2020 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. Contact me to obtain rights to use any image.