Every year around this time, as fall cedes the ground to winter, it’s my habit, and wistful delight, to look back and celebrate yet another spectacular season.
Brilliant autumn colors were a bit late in arriving this year in Northern Virginia. Thankfully, they’ve also been reluctant to depart. The trees were gracious in shedding their leaves little by little, allowing time for us to reckon with their approaching absence. On this mid-November day, most of the hardwoods are now bare. The Japanese maples by our screened porch, though, have saved their intensest, rubiest reds for right now.
The pin oak at the center edge of our front yard is also stubbornly tenacious, still holding fast to most of its gilded leaves. This is a gift tree, courtesy of a squirrel that buried an acorn some fifteen years ago. It’s perfectly positioned and now sizable. It glimmers in the early-morning sunshine.
A few flowers of this twice-blooming azalea still linger in our yard. In the spring, the blooms are uniformly a dark pink. They save their more dramatic, variegated palette for the fall.
The photos that follow attest to fall’s beauty now past.
Our small sassafras tree is now devoid of foliage, but in late October, it provided pops of orange that stood out distinctly against the gray-brown bark of our lone surviving silver maple. The tree is unusual for its leaves of three shapes: single-lobed, mitten-like, and tri-lobed.
The black gum tree behind our church put on the glorious scarlet show that the local community has come to anticipate.
Our heavily wooded neighborhood never fails to offer a beautiful autumnal display. Mornings with the dog-walking crew are feasts for all the senses, for humans and canines alike. The field below was one of Kiko’s favorite spots for a wild romp when he was in his prime. I can see him running there now, his dark red coat another dash of welcome color in the fall landscape.
I had the pleasure of accompanying a friend to the Hillwood Estate and Museum in DC earlier this month. A furloughed federal worker, she wanted to take advantage of the Museum’s offer of free entry for out-of work government workers during the shut-down. I’d never been to this remarkable place, the carefully curated former home of Marjorie Meriweather Post. The grounds were gorgeous on a sparkling November day. Several towering ginkgos were resplendent in the sunshine, their fan-shaped leaves at their yellow-gold peak.
Two more fall panoramas at Hillwood: the Japanese Garden and the Lunar Lawn. Incidentally, my skeleton friend Slim asked me to mention that the Museum is offering guiding forest bathing walks on the grounds next week, on November 21 and 22.
And back on our little acre, the black walnut trees were heavy-laden, until recently, with golden-green orbs. The telltale thuds of the falling fruit have become for us a signature sound of autumn. Our fortunate squirrels will enjoy the bounty all winter.
And as the season’s bold reds, golds and greens continue to disperse and take flight in November’s chilly winds, I find comfort in knowing that the reduced palette of the months to come will be, in its way, equally enchanting.
View of the Courtyard of the Palace from the Villard rooms, October 2015
The New York hotel that I zeroed in on, three decades ago, when we were poor grad students, was the Helmsley Palace. It’s attached to the historic Villard Houses, which I’d read about in Paul Goldberger’s book on New York architecture. Dating from 1884, the houses were modeled on a Renaissance palazzo in Rome. Six adjoining brownstone townhouses surround a central courtyard, giving the effect of one large, grand mansion. The first project of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the compound was built for Henry Villard, a former journalist and president of the Northern Pacific Railway. The location is Madison Avenue, directly across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The New York Palace, October 2010
View of the east side of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, from the courtyard of the Palace, 2025.
During the 1970s, the developer Harry Helmsley acquired the air rights to the Villard Houses and made plans for a fifty-story hotel atop the compound. Preservationists raised the alarm after hearing that Helmsley intended to demolish large portions of the historic buildings. Plans were modified, and the developer agreed to preserve most of the townhouses, including their interiors.
Inside the Villard Houses, October 2015
I saw glimpses of these lavish interiors in commercials for the hotel during the 1980s. The ads showed Harry’s second wife Leona Helmsley posed imperiously atop the central stairway, flanked by subservient staff. The tagline was “The Helmsley Palace, Where the Queen Stands Guard.” Leona may have considered herself the Grande Dame of her husband’s hotel empire, but thanks to her bullying, demanding behavior, her employees dubbed her the Queen of Mean. Having remarked that “only the little people pay taxes,” Leona later went to prison for tax evasion.
My interest in the Palace Hotel had nothing to do with Leona Helmsley, and everything do with the beautifully preserved, gilded-age interiors of the Villard Houses.
One of the Villard Rooms, with chairs set up for a wedding, 2015.
I can’t recall the details that went into my booking what I thought was a night at the Helmsley Palace. I must have caught wind of some pre-Christmas discount, because money was short in those days.
The same room, from a different angle, 2015.
What I can’t forget, though, was that we arrived in New York from Princeton in the midst of a significant nor’easter. I hadn’t heard that weather term before, and I’d certainly not experienced it. My husband and I quickly learned that a nor’easter, especially in December, is not a pleasant time for leisurely, big-city sight-seeing. The winds howled without cease, exacerbated by the tunnels created by the tall buildings. A frigid mix of sleet, snow and rain swirled around us, pelting our faces. The streets of Manhattan appeared to be littered with hulking black birds in their death throes, as useless, abandoned umbrellas flapped in the breeze. I can’t remember what we wore, but I know we were not appropriately dressed for such dire weather. My husband didn’t have a hat. I had a scarf, but it was quickly soaked, giving the effect of wearing an ice pack outdoors in winter.
A hallway inside the Villard rooms, October 2025
Why did we not cancel? Most such details, fortunately, are hazy. Probably because I’d already paid. Probably because we thought, “Oh, how bad can it be?”
It might have been worth braving the terrible weather if we had only been able to find shelter at last in that sought-after destination, the Helmsley Palace.
But no. Somehow, I’d booked our stay not at the Helmsley Palace, but at the New York Helmsley. I can’t remember when or how we discovered the mistake. Did I realize the error before our departure? Or did we go to the Palace at Madison and 51st, only to be turned away? To be sent back out into the icy winds and make our sad way over to 3rd Avenue and 42nd?
Another room in the Villard Houses, 2015. Now it’s used by the hotel as a breakfast space.
The New York Helmsley (now the Westin New York Grand Central) was, and is, no dive. Its 40-story tower was constructed in 1981, a bland rectangular block similar to that at the Palace. But its lobby was, to me, a dull, forgettable, contemporary space, and a huge disappointment when I was expecting the time-tested opulence of the Villard rooms at the Palace.
Our room was perfectly fine, definitely the nicest I’d ever entered in New York at that point. It was a vast improvement over the youth hostels and threadbare accommodations I’d been used to in my low-budget student travel in Europe. There were two windows, and an actual view. Not an especially good view, out onto a gloomy, windswept 42nd Street, but also not onto an air shaft.
My mother likes to tell the story of a Manhattan hotel room she and my father stayed in when they were young and newly married. In the adjoining bathroom, the tub appeared to have been cut in half by a wall. That was one surprise, at least, that we did not encounter during our trip.
Clock in a Villard Room hallway, October 2025.
We stayed only one night, which was a blessing. A two-night visit was beyond our means. The next day, a Saturday, the bad weather persisted. I had hoped we’d enjoy cheery lights and shop windows adorned for Christmas, but I recall no such festive sights. I assume we took refuge in a museum or two. But we walked the icy streets long enough to be very uncomfortable. We went into one of the hundreds of Sbarros in Manhattan to try to warm up. The door, oddly, had been open, and we closed it when we entered. One of the employees rushed out immediately from the kitchen to close it again. Really? I rarely cry, but that day I put my head down on the cheap laminate table and sobbed. My husband, shocked at my unseemly display, appealed to the employees, who were overheated because of their work near the pizza oven. H promised the young men that we wouldn’t be long. We’d eat our slices, thaw out a little, and be on our way. They allowed him to close the door.
We probably headed back to Penn Station shortly after we emerged from the Sbarro. After two days of enduring New York in a nor’easter, it felt like luxury, for once, to settle ourselves onto those ugly orange seats in a shabby New Jersey Transit train.
In the courtyard of the Helmsley Palace, October 2010, during a nicer visit.
We finally managed a weekend stay act the actual Palace Hotel in 2010. We’ve returned there a few times since. This past October, we had planned a weekend get-away at what is now known as the Lotte New York Palace. A nor’easter was predicted to coincide with our visit. This time, with the wisdom that comes with age and experience, we postponed for a week.
Since the beginning of October, our family has been enjoying the active company, once again, of our old family friend Slim and his loyal pack of pups. They spent the past eleven months mostly in quiet contemplation and sound sleep in their comfortable new domain, my attic art studio. Sometimes as I went upstairs to paint, I’d find them peering out from their favorite lookout perch in one of the dormers. Slim kept a pair of binoculars close at hand, along with his birding journal.
One morning in August, when our family was in Cape Cod, they were roused from napping by the sound of heavy machinery. From the attic window, they witnessed the removal of our old silver maple. It was with great sadness that they watched as the remainder of the tree was cut down, chipped up and hauled away. Slim and I are kindred spirits in our love of trees. He brushed a tear from his eye as he told me that he wept most of that summer morning.
Once the pack was feeling lively enough to venture outside to roam the grounds, they headed directly to the site of the old tree. “Hello, dear pal,” Slim said, as he settled himself in the center of the mulch pile. “I can still breathe in your essence, your goodness!”
Somehow it was news to me that Slim was an early adopter of the practice of “forest bathing.” He was introduced to the therapeutic relaxation technique during the months he spent backpacking through Japan in the early 80s. It’s one of several lifestyle choices that he holds responsible for his health, vigor, trim frame, and longevity. As we walked over to the remaining silver maple in our yard, he became my forest bathing instructor. “Get up close to this old friend,” he advised me. “Snuggle in, nice and cozy. Lean your back against the bark. Feel that solid, reassuring presence. Imagine that your feet are roots. Take deep breaths. Be aware of all your senses. Listen to the birds, watch the beetle crawling among the fallen leaves, feel the breeze on your face, and smell all those fantastic fragrances of nature. Keep breathing, slowly, deeply. ”
The practice is a great stress reducer, but it’s more than that, Slim told me. “It’s those phytoncides, you know.” I didn’t know. “They’re tree oils, great immune boosters. We breathe them in, and they have amazing healing properties. The more trees around, the better. That’s why they call it forest bathing. But we can get big benefits right here, in the company of our silver maple sister, and even from the mulch chips of her much reduced sibling.” I’ve known Slim long enough to reach eagerly for the pearls of wisdom he offers. I’ve always enjoyed being around trees, but now I know to seek them out more intentionally when life’s annoyances, large and small, start to wear on me. I expect there will be many of those times.
Slim delighted in the last of the squirrel-planted sunflowers that bloom along the fencerow.
He exulted in the clump of late-blooming Montauk daisies by my mother’s driveway. “These smell almost as good as a maple tree!,” Slim exclaimed. “Flower bathing has its benefits, too!”
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
