Cool
again this morning for August, and this early taste of chill is starting to
accelerate the autumnal changes just a little here and there.
The
birdsong of June ended weeks ago, though since there have been daily greetings
by the normal summer residents of cardinals, finches, chick-a-dees and such.
But these calls have been morning greetings and sounds of daily business
typical of late summer, less musical and varied than the mating songs of late
spring.
This
morning in particular was quiet, apart from the half-hearted cricket calls,
tempered by the chill that dampened the grasshoppers. In the pre-dawn, it was
so still that it was easy to imagine a killing frost had occurred, silencing
all but the most hardy or lucky of the insect residents. As the daylight came
and the air warmed, the birds resumed their conversations, and the insects
rejoined in background noise, but things felt different, as if they all are
whispering about change and migration soon enough.
Look
now to the older maples in town, those who reached maturity years ago and yet
continue to hang on each year in producing leaves and life, even if more of
their limbs remain lifeless than not. These maples show the change sooner than
do others, with chlorophyll degrading now and oranges and yellows beginning to
display. The stag horn sumacs and poison ivy are also starting to change
throughout town, the former particularly pretty with individual leaves on the
periphery turning yellow and others yet a vibrant green.
The ivy
yellows up the vine, which climbs the trunks of all the trees it seems. Soon it
will make it appear as if the trunks are on fire, with speckled patches of
brilliant reds and yellows ascending.
Notes:
Fireweed
in bloom all along Grove upper and lower
No comments:
Post a Comment