The beauty of letting go

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. ~John Burroughs

We had a glorious autumn this year. Each day, the colors shifted from green to gold to russet and burgundy, slow steps into the final leaf fall.

The hillside remained handsome for longer than expected while the leaves in the woods began their slow shift into the colors of fire.

Pixie loves the smells of autumn and the fun of running through crisp leaves.

The rosy pink blossoms of Hydrangea ‘Limelight’ glowed beneath the gold of the bitternut hickory leaves, a column of unexpected colors. The trees in the surrounding woods slowly crescendoed from a murmur of pale gold  to a full-throated song of orange and russet red.

Yesterday morning I walked through the garden, now quiet and hushed except for the crackle of fallen leaves on the path and the calls of a few winter birds. The leaves lie on the ground and pale winter sunlight has replaced the mysterious shadows and deep colors of autumn. The fall symphony has come to a close and winter waits in the wings, a new season carrying its own quiet beauty.

You can see the beautiful progression of color and leaf fall here – enjoy!

Autumn teaches us the beauty of letting go. Growth requires release – it’s what the trees do. ~ka’ala

41 thoughts on “The beauty of letting go

  1. Wow, Lynn, your videos just keep getting better and better. It’s a delight to hear your voice this time and a lovely voice for narration it is. 🙂 The colors you’ve brought into the garden over the years are like a symphony, particularly that Hydrangea/hickory combination. But what I kept coming back to was the open-branched tree that’s fan or vase-shaped of several photos and in the video. Oh, that’s a beauty! It seems to complement everything.

    • Thank you for the wonderful compliment, Lynn – I have been working on those video skills and am having fun with it. I think the tree that you mentioned is the native mulberry that stands behind the fence. I love it, so graceful as if it is dancing no matter the season, plus it feeds all the birds and creatures with a bounty of berries in the summer. And my camera keeps gravitating to it 🙂

  2. It appears that my comment, written a few days ago didn’t post for some reason, so let me try again.

    Beautiful video, Lynn. It embodies that je ne sais quoi value that makes the viewer feel as though he/she is right there with you, guided by the splendid narration.

  3. My apologies for being a bit late in commenting..
    I enjoyed your video, the garden looks glorious in autumn ( my favourite season) and your narration was lovely. Enjoy your falling leaves!

  4. I’m a little bit late to comment, but I absolutely loved your video, with music and commentary. Autumn is my favourite season, aren’t the colours wonderful!

  5. It certainly does look like a gorgeous and slow-paced autumn in your paradisiacal corner of the Earth, Lynn! Thanks for the beautiful views and food for the spirit!

  6. Your garden is SO beautiful! And you are so very poetic! I love your posts. I miss western PA in the Fall. We do not get nearly the Fall colors here in NC. Of course the mountains do, but that is 3 hours away, and everyone else goes there, which makes for crowds and traffic. Having grown up in Uniontown, we were very close to the mountains, & made a trek there every Fall–sometimes more than once or twice.

    • Thank you so much, Nancy! There are advantages to gardening in NC, especially for a broader range of plants, but I do love being here. Even in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, we get the full four season effect!

      • And yet some plants I had success with in PA, won’t do well here–such as Geraniums. We do have Magnolias (we have 2 huge ones in our yard), a fig tree, pampas grasses, etc, which would not do well in western PA!

      • Right! We have so many deer, that it’s a waste of time and money to plant a variety. So our shaded back yard has LOTS of Lenten Roses. Good thing I love them! I put beautiful flowers on the open deck, where hopefully the deer don’t climb the steps! I never saw that happen, but then I watched a video taken in my neighborhood. On that video I actually saw a deer climb up steps onto a porch!

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