Perhaps it is due to the nature of my education but I find that every year I pay very close attention to the harbingers of the seasons. Several years ago, I noticed that all the Ginko Biloba trees on campus chose one day to suddenly loose all of their leaves. It literally rained Ginko leaves all day until the trees were completely bare. I tried to pinpoint a single reason for the sudden loss (day of the year, temperature, hours of sunlight) but the following couple of years didn't seem to follow any given pattern. It was like the Ginkos got together overnight and decided to synchronize their shedding. Leaf shedding day happened last week. But this time it was more than just the Ginkos. As I got on my bike to ride to work, I noticed that one of my neighbor's Maple trees hadn't lost its leaves although mine had. It was a beautiful, still, sunny day but something (perhaps water content) hit a critical level and by the time I started home, I noticed that the Ginkos (which had been full of beautiful yellow leaves that morning) were nearly bare. The park I ride through on the way home was also littered with several inches of newly fallen leaves and my neighbor's Maple tree had a golden skirt. Since there was no wind, each tree was encircled by the leaves it had lost, making the neighborhood an interesting patchwork of colors.
This post really has no point but I am continually amazed at the beauty and order in nature. As President Hinkley said, "God rules."
6 comments:
The tree in our back yard that is surrounded by the deck has always lost all its leaves in one day. Until this year. We, too, are puzzled by this. It usually "rains" leaves on the deck for an entire day. It is fun to stand under it and get covered. But this year they have slowly lost their leaves like our other trees.
It has been a strange year. When Adrianne was married the end of September, all the leaves on our trees had turned a beautiful yellow color. I cut branches of red, orange and yellow leaves just up the hill behind us and we used those for decorating. It was a normal year. This year the colors were very drab on the mountainsides, especially the reds. And they didn't turn color until about a month later toward the end of October. I know hot and dry usually causes the drabness, but I don't know why our trees in the back yard have just lost their leaves in the past week. It's almost Thanksgiving. Remarkable.
Mom
I wish my willow would drop all its leaves at once! I've raked twice now and my back yard still remains covered with leaves. I can't keep up with it. This tree is large and must have a million leaves on it. Great shade. Busy falls.
Mom, I remember the leaves starting to change when we were there in Aug. I was sad to leave all the colors. They probably seem drab to you but even the drabness of the Utah leaves then are more vibrant than Oklahoma. The leaves here don't really change colors. Some do but they are few and far between and they are not a vibrant color. Most of the trees are just a yucky brown and then the wind here blows all the time (yesterday we had gusts of 40 mph) so the leaves just fall off before they even change. It's very sad. But, I can't complain too much because it is still in the 70's most days.
Jess, our neighbors have this huge acorn tree in the front yard and it drops all the acorns into our yard. Both years the leaves all fall into our yard! We filled abotu 20 huge leaf bags last year full of those stupid leaves. We are just waiting for more to fall before we start this year.
Mom beat me to it telling about our Mulberry tree leaves not falling all at once for the first time. What she did not tell was that we wanted to treat the deck with coating befor the winter. That is hard to do with the leaves falling on it.
The scene you describe, Jason, it worth living there to see. I can see it in my mind's eye from your description. Thank you.
Adrianne, there is no such tree as an acorn tree. Acorns come from Oak trees of all kinds. I do feel sorry for you saying that you had twenty bags of leaves from that tree. How do you dispose of the bags? That is hard for us, and we have that many from our maples, too.
Dad Clark
I think with today's weather, Ohio won't have a leaf left on any tree in the tri-state area! The wind is gusting and freezing us all out! Most of the trees are finally turning colors here (though not really very bright) and falling at the same time. Leaves on the ground are beautiful, but it also makes me sad. I love the fall.
I love the fall too! I'm not ready for the winter. I need to start mentally preparing myself for it. I'm not so excited to have to bundle the kinds up EVERY time we go outside. (I'm sure we'll save money though since it'll be such a pain that I won't want to go shopping!) The hardest thing about the colder weather so far has been not being able to walk Abby to preschool. It's so much easier than loading the kids up in the car. Oh well! Another hard thing about the cold weather is that even though it's cold outside it looks warm so the kids still beg to go outside...and I'm the mean mom for saying no! It's supposed to be nice this weekend...maybe we'll have to spend lots of time outside soaking it up!
Jen
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