It feels like nature is holding her breath - I love this moment just before the last of the leaves fall. Foliage that unfurled last April and clothed the garden for the past seven months has only a few days left, at best.
The colors are as intense as they'll ever get, the glory so very brief. Spring is a more measured season, a crescendo of bloom with one plant flowering after another over months. Fall is a percussive blast like a pair of clanging cymbals; soon there'll be only the reverberation left in our mind's eye.
Early November brings days wet, rainy, and windy enough to strip the trees naked, revealing views we haven't seen in months...The vivid, fluttering foliage will be piles of soggy dead leaves, clogging drains and mushing down to winter. By next week it'll be the starkness of bare branches, the garden stripped down to its bones again.
In the next couple of weeks, we'll have our first hard freeze, and for gardeners, the year will come to a close.
A torch-like little maple at the Woodmen Cemetery in Langley
The little bench beneath the big tree at the top of the hill on Second Street is one of my favorite scenes in Langley, especially when the maple is in color...
A multi-trunked vine maple doing its fall thing...
Sourwood (Oxydendron arboreum) turns to pure fire in late October..the creamy flowers hold on long enough to contrast with the blazing foliage
These past few posts have reminded me of Wright's Park and the Seymour Botanical Conservatory in Tacoma. It's a wonderful place to visit year round but is most beautiful in the fall.
If you haven't been...it's well worth a visit...especially walking into the Conservatory on a cold, winter day!
Loved that last photo of the little pumpkin in the woodpile "window" :)
Posted by: Chris | November 01, 2011 at 05:16 PM
There is nothing like the Fall color of a Oxydendron!!!
Posted by: Lauren Hall-Behrens | November 02, 2011 at 09:46 AM
; soon there'll be only the reverberation left in our mind's eye.
Posted by: lacoste jackets | November 03, 2011 at 01:24 AM
This post is so beautifully written, it makes my heart leap with joy for fall. Thanks, Val, for the sagacious words and vibrant pics.
Posted by: Linsey | November 05, 2011 at 01:58 PM