Design and architecture can be wondrous, but nothing can rival the complex, shifting power of nature.  What a teacher!  Walking back home this Fall morning with a coffee from a local cafe, I noticed the golden decline of the Jacob’s Ladder in our front yard along with Japanese Maple leaves curled up against the coming cold. The thick, grizzly bark in the background belongs to one of our gigantic Black Oaks, a tree that’s clocked about two or three hundred years…so far.