Yellow-leaved trees, yellow-leaved sidewalks

I always gauge what the weather will be like on any given day, based on how much of the Eiffel Tower I can see from my window. Today, unfortunately, is a 2/3 of the tower kind of day; which is actually a vast improvement over Sunday, which was a 0/3 day, but quite lacking when compared to the full visibility of yesterday afternoon/evening. There are lots of slashes in that last sentence. Ok, I admit, I changed a period to a semicolon to keep all the slashes together. Now, with that burst of honesty behind me, I can sugar-coat my last few weeks of Paris into a few conventional paragraphs, and not feel guilty at all.
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Frankly, when I don't write about things that happen right away, they get rather fuzzy. It is difficult to explain exactly how it felt to be in the Louvre again last Friday - overwhelming, as always, perhaps describes it best. And I distinctly remember laughing very hard with Max over something or other last week - though what it was I am at a loss to decide. Maybe the more important thing is that we do laugh together, and quite frequently at that, with all the language conundrums we come across.
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Fall in Paris means lots of yellow-leaved trees and yellow-leaved sidewalks. It's all quite charming, until you realize it will soon be very bare and lonely looking. But, as Forster said, "in the decaying autumn woods there sometimes rise odours remniscent of spring." Well I, for one, smell two distinctly different smells in autumn and in spring. For one thing, autumn smells more spicy - if you know what I mean. (I think Allie probably does.) But maybe he was just trying to be hopeful and make a pleasant metaphor out of something sad. It's hard to remember sometimes that the trees aren't dead in winter.
It is for just this reason that I recently purchased a flower for my window-sill. It is hot pinkish red, though I thought it was orangish red when I bought it. The splash of color is cheering against the gray slate rooftops of Paris, and especially against the stark whiteness of a heavy cloud cover. And with the green leaves beneath the red petals, one is almost reminded of Christmas, though not quite yet. One has the right to be reminded of Christmas in November, in Paris, you know, because there is no Thanksgiving to pose a threat to early holiday cheer.