Colors

The best thing to do after eating some muffins is head to the park.

Here in the South autumn is never as spectacular as is in New England. The colors here are neither as intense nor as long lasting. But still, it is our autumn, our season, our reminder. And this is by far the most colorful year of leaves that I’ve seen in 15 years.

I’ve spent a good deal of time watching this particular tree next to the swing sets. I’ve watched it progress from just a faint hint of red at the outer fringes, to something more, as it the red borderline crept toward the center, eventually swallowing the whole tree. The green is pushed inward, back down into the trunk where it will lie waiting through the cold of winter.

The day I took these pictures I noticed that this red progression inward also happens on the individual leaves, which start with a bit of red at edge and slowly get swallowed up into redness before they fall.

These images are a couple of weeks old though. We braved the cold and wind again this morning. The tree was bare. Winter.

And so it goes.