<center> **autumn,** *ö'tum, n.* the season of the year where fruits are gathered, generally (in the northern hemisphere) from August or September to October or November. </center>


![autumn.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSjTexiXJ2AwycPrAzT6apJgCrjn67gHkT4JQ7DLFmoDa/autumn.jpg)
*leaf and acrylic on paper*

I have something for leaves. They are telling of a neighbourhood. In December, I went to visit my sister in Bangalore and we spent an afternoon at Cubbon Park where the trees were being beautifully autumnal.  The park floor was carpetted with fallen leaves and I picked the ones I liked best. It gave me a new way to explore my surrounding. While all eyes were turned upwards at the bamboo groves, mine were scanning the floor for pretty leaves. I knew that a pine tree was nearby because I found pine cones. I recognised gulmohar flowers intermingled with peepal leaves  which told me that the trees were close to one another. Why have I never thought of looking for signs of a place by scanning its floor?

![IMG_20171211_133137_243.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmT9zde7D5RocMgvzcQucz6eJQRhdh6mMRPP5V3eQZ7c7m/IMG_20171211_133137_243.jpg)
*Bamboo grove, Cubbon Park, Bangalore, Dec 2017*

![20171210_142056.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmaeCBZcwdiRZi3hDhaTMNPiVPDwn3Bi8iccGEdzzEKPCG/20171210_142056.jpg)
*Leaves we collected*

Anyway, I let the leaves sit in a corner and forgot about them for a month until my friend and I went to the heart of Chennai on one of our let's-discover-the-city rounds. There we found plain cloth tote bags and both of us wanted to paint something onto them. I remembered the leaves and thought they'd make great stencils to paint onto the bags. And that's exactly what I did! I then walked around the neighbourhoods close by and collected more leaves - I wanted to paint the leaves onto bags and stencil the pincode of the area I collected it from on to the reverse. 

![20180105_003920.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmW7paU1iKf1wKHhgBZmNtoTG78JZR5Ut8MVLiV5JnErvh/20180105_003920.jpg)
*trial and error on the bags!*

There were a few pages left in *a* when I was flipping through the dictionary - ones that I didn't have any ideas for earlier. I looked at autumn when I was in the midst of my leaf frenzy and it seemed fitting to paint some of the leaves I collected onto the page.