Faliing Leaves

Autumn is my favorite season of the year.  I love the blue of the sky, the crisp air, the scent of leaves, and the glorious colors.  To me, fall is invigorating, and I love to be outside during the glory days of this season. 

Yesterday was such a day, and David and I spent time raking in our back yard.  Now I know that many of you have been raking for some time.  Some of you may have finished the job because your trees dropped all their leaves some time ago.  But for us, this was the Big Rake in the back yard.  You can see our garden (well, sort of see it; it's on the left of the photo by David's beautiful split rail fence), and you can also see the leaves I'd raked off the garden onto the lawn area.  In the back, we tend to wait until most of the leaves have fallen before we head out to clean up.

As I said, many of you may already have finished this task last month.  Certainly if you have maples, aspens, willows, crab apples, sycamores, or other "early droppers", your leaf piles started with the first snows.  But, you see, we have oak and beech trees whose leaves cling tenaciously to their parent tree until late November and even in to December depending on the weather.  The oak trees in our front and side yards release their leaves slowly late in the season, and the beech hold on for maybe another week after that.  So our biggest raking days are around Thanksgiving time which somehow seems appropriate to me. 

When we first moved in this house, I was mildly disappointed that we didn't have any maples with their more rapid growth, wonderful fall colors, and beautiful shape, but I've learned to value our copse of white oaks.  They're a more rangy tree, and compared to maples, they're quite slow growing.  However, now I am so glad we have our tall oaks to keep our home cool in the summer, and I have learned to appreciate the dark gold to brown color of their  leaves.  And the beech?  Well, I chose to plant the one in the back yard (there were no trees in the back when we moved in) to provide an island of shade and a beautiful outline. 

See this pile of oak and beech leaves?  What's not to like about their subtle colors?  Imagine drawing or painting this picture.  What colors would you choose?  Challenging, isn't it?  Do you see why I value the oak and beech?