Remember the fun you had as a kid walking through the freshly fallen leaves, listening to them crunch under your feet, smelling that fragrance of lost summer, eying the array of color, sometimes all in one leaf? Maybe like me you had the pleasure of jumping into the leaf piles your dad had just spent hours raking up, burying your sibling or getting covered yourself, bits of leaves forcing their way down your shirt, tickling your neck. And perhaps you too collected the best and the brightest of those leaves to seal between sheets of wax paper to hang in a sunny window like a piece of stained glass.
Leaves don't really change color; the colors are always there, but the large amount of chlorophyll (this is what converts the sun's energy into food for the tree) that gives the leaves their green color through the growing season masks the other colors. When the chlorophyll dissipates in the fall, the other colors show through. The colder weather also causes the trapped glucose in some leaves to produce bright reds and purples. The shades of brown are from trapped waste.
Trees drop their leaves in the fall to keep from dying of thirst because leaves use up huge amounts of water. During most of the year that's not an issue, but in the winter, "psysiological" drought occurs and the tree can't absorb enough water. It mostly survives on stored food and water in its trunk and branches. Without its leaves, the tree can survive for a much longer time making it through until spring arrives, thawing the ground and bringing quenching rains.
"Autumn is a second Spring, when every leaf is a flower."
- Albert Camus
yes,exactly! i would rake all the leaves from the tall oak to the foot of my slide.then use wax paper to wax the metal slide,making it sooo... much more slippery.stuffing the crinkled paper into my pocket, i climbed the stairs and proudly anticipated the plunge into that earthy nest of gathered foilage;scarlets,browns,reds and yellows.ah...the simple joys of a childhood autumn
ReplyDeleteThose joys are still there for us Patricia. Someone once said, "Don't grow up. It's a trap." You may no longer have a slide but collect some leaves anyways.
ReplyDeleteAutumn Fires
ReplyDeleteIn the other gardens
and all up the vale,
from the autumn bonfires
see the smoky trail!
Pleasant summer over
and all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!
R.L.S.
"God's World"
ReplyDelete"O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! that gaunt crag
To cursh! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory of it all,
But never knew I this:
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, - Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, - let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Autumn Day
ReplyDeleteLord, it is time. Let the great summer go,
Lay your long shadows on the sundials,
And over harvest piles let the winds blow.
Command the last fruits to be ripe;
Grant them some other southern hour,
Urge them to completion, and with power
Drive final sweetness to the heavy grape.
Who's homeless now, will for long stay alone.
No home will build his weary hands,
He'll wake, read, write letters long to friends
And will the alleys up and down
Walk restlessly, when falling leaves dance.
-Rilke
English: (c) Guntram Deichsel
DeleteNovember Night
ReplyDeleteby Adelaide Crapsey
Listen. . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.