The rumbling and swooshing and screeching woke me long before the alarm clock sounded.

 

Did a freight train jump the tracks? Was there a terrorist attack? A horrible traffic accident?

 

In a stumbling, drunken-like stupor, I made my way to the open bedroom window to discover the source of the fearsome cacophony . . . It sounded like a thousand needles prickling the predawn sky.

Standing there in the cool darkness, I realized, as the latest gush surrounded me and pushed past — The last of the brown, crumbling, dead leaves were being hurled and smashed to smithereens against any barrier standing in their way by . . . 

 

Mother Nature, blowing Autumn off and making way for the entrance of Winter!

 

(I understand she has an important job to do . . . but, couldn’t the bitch have waited until after the alarm went off? Geez.)