Tag Archives: autumn leaves

The beauty of letting go

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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

How beautiful the leaves

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

The weeping cherry glows as the last bit of gold in the lower garden, an umbrella of light in the late autumn garden.

The mild fall weather has delayed leaf fall and a few days have been warm enough to dine outside. Bill and I ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant in our local park; a mild sunny day filled the patio with diners in November.  The stillness and beauty of the lake we viewed from our table stayed with us for days.

The garden is a place of constant change. Two weeks ago, the trees were still loaded with leaves 

and the skies were blue.

What was golden

became bronze

and finally fell to the earth.

Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground. ~Andrea Gibson

The last burst of color of autumn is at the entrance to our driveway, where the kousa dogwood and azalea leaves are having a multicolored moment.

I want to send a special thanks to all of you who read and commented on my last post about our beautiful Angel – your words meant so much and helped in the healing process. One of our longtime friends sent us a sketch he created of one of Angel’s photos; we were surprised and thrilled and he promised to send an oil painting. Gus was the best man at our wedding and our drummer when Bill and I were performing many years ago in Pittsburgh as Sundance (Gus is looking over my shoulder). He retired and moved to Florida a few years ago with his wife Shirley, where he has returned to drawing and painting – his work is regularly shown at a local gallery. We were deeply touched when this beautiful painting of our girl arrived this week – Gus caught the essence of her beauty and expression and it was one more gift of friendship that is healing our hearts.

For those of you who celebrate the coming American Thanksgiving holiday, I wish you a warm and loving holiday and a joyous autumn to all.

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them—
The summer flowers depart—
Sit still— as all transform’d to stone,
Except your musing heart. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Autumn

 

All images and text ©2021 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved except where noted. Painting of Angel Eyes by © 2021 Gus DiPerna All Rights Reserved

Painted leaves

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October is the month for painted leaves . . . ~Thoreau

While the garden is quietly collapsing back into the earth, the trees are a riot of color. Cold crisp nights dipping towards the freezing point have triggered the shift from soft green leaves to a paintbox of crisp autumn colors. Most of my time outside has been spent looking upwards, that’s where the drama is. (click on any photo to see a full size image)

 

October proved a riot a riot to the senses and climaxed those giddy last weeks before Halloween. ~Keith Donohue

A few tender plants linger – a coral Million Bells tucked under the spiral staircase, Gloriosa daisies in a planter on the deck, a mound of coral red ‘Sedona’ coleus in a protected corner of the house.

 

The herb circle in the front of the house remains lush, with tall grasses and creamy seedhead clouds of our native white snakeroot (Eupatorium rugosum)octoberherbcircle

along with a mound of tall blue ageratums self-sown from last year. ageratum

A few days ago, a flock of robins gathered for their flight south and indicated to me that they wanted their favorite watering bowl at the foot of the oaks cleaned and refilled. I obliged and they drank long and deep before taking to the skies. oakmaple

The leaves of the kousa dogwoods have turned a deep russet red kousaleaveswhile the wild grapevine leaves remain green even as their stems turn scarlet. wildgrapevineleaf

As I step outside each morning, a rich sweet smell arises from the earth, the scent of fallen fruit, decomposing leaves and rain soaked earth, the smell of true autumn. hardyplumbagoleaves

At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth . . .  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

The Subtle Season

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Subtle and dark, lovely and stark, in gentle tones of gray and brown and white, for a night and a day, then all turns gray . . .  from the song “Winter” by Lynn Emberg Purse

In the study of the physics of sound, I have always found it interesting that humans don’t perceive many different subtleties of volume but an almost infinitesimal perception of the subtleties in pitch (frequency) and tone color (timbre.)

And so it is in the garden.  It is that “in between” season, after the loud fireworks of autumn and before the stark black and white of winter.  The garden is quiet these days, with mostly the wind and the occasional bird call for a soundtrack as I wander through. But with the closest attention, there is subtle beauty that will linger until the snows come.

Misty Woodlands
Dewy Grass
Dewy oak leaf
Inflorescence
Leaf and Hydrangea
Mossy rock with leaf
Seedhead
Cluster of seedheads
Hydrangea aborescens
Fallen branch with leaves

Shadow and Light

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Chiaroscuro – Italian for the play of shadow and light, most often referring to tonal relationships in visual art (Wikipedia)

Walking through a garden or a forest is a much different experience than looking at it from afar. When seen from a vantage point, no matter how beautiful a view, only your eyes see the beauty before you and you are separated from it – it and you.  But walking in it and through it, that is a different experience altogether.  You and it become a “we” – fused together by a play of shadow and light, transient shifts of color and tone that enfold you as a part of nature’s spectral ballet.

Chiaroscuro is a term that painters used to describe the use of shadow and light to create the illusion of three dimensionality on a two dimensional plane.  Photographers embraced it  as a reminder that they were photographing light, not things. As I walked through the garden this week, each step became an experience of shadow and light. Every plant and flower took on a golden glow, filtered through the autumn leaves above. Standing below a fiery maple tree became a transcendent experience of standing in liquid gold; the deep umber and burgundy hues of light traveling through oak leaves captivated me for long moments.  The beauty of autumn is transitory, all the more treasured for that short period of time when we look upward at a canopy of color that is unmatched in any other season.

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Here is French singer Juliette Greco singing  Les Fuielles Morte (Autumn Leaves) in French in a live concert in Berlin (1967) in a simple arrangement of voice and guitar.  Sartre said of her that she had “. . . millions of poems in her voice.” (Wikipedia)

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep.  ~ Geothe

For a translation of the original French lyrics (by Jacques Prevert) to Les Feuilles mortes/Autumn Leaves (not the Johnny Mercer English lyrics) – see this translation by Coby Lubliner.