I looked down at a leaf on the playground the other day after a rainstorm (another one with wildly intense winds is raging at the moment, howling down the chimney and making me wish I’d taken more and better photos of fall tree foliage, since tomorrow I imagine everything will be on the ground!) and what did I see?
Or, rather, should I say, “Whooooo did I see?!”
Yeah, OK, I don’t seem to be done with Halloween yet. Wonder if the wind is sending any of our tiny pumpkins flying right now?
I’ve been frantically working (like a squirrel in late autumn? Hm, maybe Dr. Destructo and I have more in common than I thought!) on a couple of bigger posts but nothing is quite ready to put up yet. Today is busy, no time to write, so all I have to offer is this photo from a recent walk.
I hope this weekend brings you time to commune with your garden, or at least a moment to think about it and plan for next year!
I had been thinking the fall colors here in Seattle seemed more stunning than usual this year, and it turns out I was not wrong. Whenever there’s a noticeable change in how the plants behave, I start to worry and fret about global warming, but in this case it’s aprobably just a minor pattern shift, nothing to worry about.
The Seattle Weekly had a squib in their most recent issue about this local phenomenon, an unseasonably dry fall with warmer days and cooler nights than usual, plus fewer early-season windstorms to knock all that gorgeous foliage to the ground. Since there is no link to the article on the Weekly’s site, I will quote a portion of it here for those interested in the science behind fall leaf color beauty:
“The brightest foliage colors come when the nights are cool and the days are warm, explains atmospheric sciences professor Mark Stoelinga. This “diurnal effect” stimulates the chemical process that turns leaf color. Clouds, which we usually have plenty of this time of year, hamper this effect because they act like a blanket at night, stopping heat from radiating upward, and a barrier during the day, preventing the sun from permeating downward.”
Of course, now that we’ve had a few of those wind storms, I’m regretting not having spent more time walking around looking at and taking pictures of all the lovely leaves. Oh well, even on the ground, they’re quite something.
Who knows when we’ll get a fall like this again, but I’m glad to have seen the beauty that it produced. Did anyone else notice any odd weather changes this autumn in your region?
Sometimes I get a crick in my neck from looking down all the time as I walk. I’m not going to get into some metaphor for this as my mode of living, although I do tend toward the pessimistic at times. Really, I’m just looking at the plants! Sometimes, I’m rewarded with a special little tableau put out there by Mother Nature and I wonder if anyone else saw it before it was disrupted by wind, rain, critter or rake.
This was one from a parking strip garden near my house:
No, I didn’t arrange any of that. Just saw it and snapped the pic. The stones, the evergreen needles, the tiny green groundcover leaves, and the dew on the fallen tree leaves looked like a still life painting to me.
When you walk, where do you look? Up at the clouds or down at the plants?
