The stages of autumn
Nov. 2nd, 2003 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanThis has been a spectacular autumn. It's been a particularly spectactular October, which is fair enough, because last October was just exactly like November, and then we had November itself.
When I went to California at the end of August, the forecast for the time I would be gone was all spotted with clouds and chances of rain. When I came back, it was painfully evident that no rain had fallen. The light had changed to fall light, but it was hot and dry and summery, one of those enchanting and bewildering between-states that Minnesota provides with perhaps excessive regularity and enthusiasm.
Then it rained, kindly and slowly; the rain did not run off the hard ground and disappear into storm sewers, and it did not bring down the half-turned tentatively-colored leaves of the trees. Afterwards, the weather continued mild and sunny. Plants that had gone dormant during the drought put out new shoots, new leaves, new flowers. Roses bloomed, annuals of all types and colors flourished, phlox rebloomed, irises contemplated making flowers, mallow zebrina burst out in purple-striped blossoms, hollyhocks revived. The squirrels stole all our tomatoes, ripe, half-ripe, and green, ate a quarter to a half of each, and left them neatly lined up on the retaining wall that separates our yard from our neighbors'. A few they left tumbled on the ground, no doubt as a warning.
The trees did the slowest and most glorious transformation I can remember ever seeing. For weeks everything was burning up. Elms and Norway maples were still green, but new, glittering green, not the usual dusty summer's-end hue. Sugar maples and white maples and lindens and gingkos blazed into every color of gold and red; oaks that in most years turn brown were deep, deep velvety red; on the perpetually-confused Norway maples, a few leaves here and there went yellow. The sugar maples looked like rocket flames. Everything was burning but nothing fell; all those colors reached upwards. I couldn't look out the window without remembering all the books I'd read about people who built rocket ships in their back yards. At night the stars burned down, and even in its retreat Mars was the color of the oak leaves.
Then we had rain and wind, and then everything was burning down; all the ground was carpeted. The elms turned yellow and flung off their leaves almost overnight. The Norway maples made a few more leaves turn yellow.
There was one early frost that collapsed the tender plants, but the roses were still blooming. The asters and chrysanthemums started, surrounded still by more and more reblooming spring plants. I found a huge white iris, with a touch of pale lavender in its throat and a stunning scent, blooming on somebody's boulevard next to gigantic rounds of chrysanthemum in white and yellow and dark red. There were forget-me-nots and cornflowers and blue flax. In my own much neglected yard the yellow yarrow and the white rebloomed, along with the mallow zebrina and the scabiosa.
Last week it went very dark and chilly, just in time to prevent us from seeing any aurorae that might be going. But the flowers are still there. The Norway maples are about half yellow, on my street, and have begun to toss off a few leaves here and there. And today there is sunshine and, on the redoubtable Henry Kelsey, one last rosebud.
Pamela
When I went to California at the end of August, the forecast for the time I would be gone was all spotted with clouds and chances of rain. When I came back, it was painfully evident that no rain had fallen. The light had changed to fall light, but it was hot and dry and summery, one of those enchanting and bewildering between-states that Minnesota provides with perhaps excessive regularity and enthusiasm.
Then it rained, kindly and slowly; the rain did not run off the hard ground and disappear into storm sewers, and it did not bring down the half-turned tentatively-colored leaves of the trees. Afterwards, the weather continued mild and sunny. Plants that had gone dormant during the drought put out new shoots, new leaves, new flowers. Roses bloomed, annuals of all types and colors flourished, phlox rebloomed, irises contemplated making flowers, mallow zebrina burst out in purple-striped blossoms, hollyhocks revived. The squirrels stole all our tomatoes, ripe, half-ripe, and green, ate a quarter to a half of each, and left them neatly lined up on the retaining wall that separates our yard from our neighbors'. A few they left tumbled on the ground, no doubt as a warning.
The trees did the slowest and most glorious transformation I can remember ever seeing. For weeks everything was burning up. Elms and Norway maples were still green, but new, glittering green, not the usual dusty summer's-end hue. Sugar maples and white maples and lindens and gingkos blazed into every color of gold and red; oaks that in most years turn brown were deep, deep velvety red; on the perpetually-confused Norway maples, a few leaves here and there went yellow. The sugar maples looked like rocket flames. Everything was burning but nothing fell; all those colors reached upwards. I couldn't look out the window without remembering all the books I'd read about people who built rocket ships in their back yards. At night the stars burned down, and even in its retreat Mars was the color of the oak leaves.
Then we had rain and wind, and then everything was burning down; all the ground was carpeted. The elms turned yellow and flung off their leaves almost overnight. The Norway maples made a few more leaves turn yellow.
There was one early frost that collapsed the tender plants, but the roses were still blooming. The asters and chrysanthemums started, surrounded still by more and more reblooming spring plants. I found a huge white iris, with a touch of pale lavender in its throat and a stunning scent, blooming on somebody's boulevard next to gigantic rounds of chrysanthemum in white and yellow and dark red. There were forget-me-nots and cornflowers and blue flax. In my own much neglected yard the yellow yarrow and the white rebloomed, along with the mallow zebrina and the scabiosa.
Last week it went very dark and chilly, just in time to prevent us from seeing any aurorae that might be going. But the flowers are still there. The Norway maples are about half yellow, on my street, and have begun to toss off a few leaves here and there. And today there is sunshine and, on the redoubtable Henry Kelsey, one last rosebud.
Pamela
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-11-02 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-02 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-02 08:46 pm (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-11-03 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-03 11:01 am (UTC)The one I am so happy to have right now did not bloom until September; it was a very early spring seedling and apparently decided that it had gone through weather that approximated a whole year, so it would bloom, damn it. That's okay, only the real yearling sulked and did nothing and fell over, and all the seedlings for next year are in extremely inconvenient locations. I don't mind moving them, but you can't really move a plant out of a crack in the sidewalk, because you can't get enough root system out.
Oh, well, they provide a no-doubt salutary element of surprise. We all know gardening has SO FEW of those.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-11-03 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-02 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-03 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-03 07:09 am (UTC)