Autumn is getting old, and the burning bushes are finally ablaze.
Warmer weather stunted the annual fall colors and the withering of vines and such. A light frost adjusted the fall timeline. The timeline does not recognize clocks and calendars. The maple trees lit up and became their usual colorful selves.
Oak leaves often turn a muted red or deep brown. This year, they’ve stayed gnarly green with brittle brown edges. Only a few are showing any red. They won’t compliment the gold-leafed hickory trees much this year. When autumn ages slowly, because of lingering warm weather, usual hues often are missing from nature’s palette.
The roses are hanging in there but not for long. The first really good frost that took a bite out of the thermometer over the weekend may have signaled the fall coda before winter takes over. Maybe. The roller-coaster weather pattern this year isn’t rare, but it isn’t the norm.
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After the first hard frost, the maples waste no time shedding their red, yellow and orange leaves. They’ll be a centerpiece for days and turn mostly bare in what seems like a matter of hours when the temperature falls below 30.
That’s 30 Fahrenheit, not Centigrade. Yes, I said Centigrade because that’s what Old Man Celsius called his scale.
Trees have been shedding leaves for weeks now, but that weekend frost raised the alarm for the trees to quit stalling like 4-year-old children and go to sleep. I associate music with the falling of the leaves. (I do that with a lot of things, by the way.) Sometimes, the music is like a lullaby; other times, the music is energetic.
If the breeze merely whispers, the shedding is like Roger Williams’ sweet walk down the piano keyboard in his famous version of “Autumn Leaves.” If the breeze becomes wind, the musical accompaniment bursts forth Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” or the second part of Rossini’s “William Tell Overture.”
Had he lived where I do, I think Johnny Mercer would have missed his darling most of all when autumn leaves start to fall because she wasn’t there to help him rake.
This is the time of year where you keep the leaves swept just enough to find the driveway and fragile plants won’t be mashed or choked.
The day of reckoning will come, however, when the leaves must be cleared and pulverized as much as possible. It’s the price one must pay for having a lot of trees and enjoying their spring and autumn shows.
I regard that price as a mere pittance compared to the joy the trees give to me.
I give thanks for my many blessings. After all, Thanksgiving is upon us. It’s a time when we express our gratitude for the bounty we have received and all the good things in our lives. Some of us thank our God on Thanksgiving. Some people thank their employer, or governor, or hero — whoever — or nobody.
Others pat themselves on the back, while some complain that things could be better and it ain’t their fault.
When you think about it, we do have a lot of blessings for which we should be thankful in spite of the self-inflicted wounds that have disturbed us individually and as a society.
Still, it’s good that we can appreciate the blessings in our lives and that we are capable of doing great acts of kindness, compassion and service — for no other reason than that’s what we want to do.
There is always hope a-plenty when people care about each other.
I’m counting my blessings this year, and I hope I can rake and blow and crunch leaves for at least another 30 years.