Texas and Falling Leaves
November 7, 2005
The soft autumn sun filters down through the tree canopy, illuminating leaf colors as they descend to the forest floor. Light breezes in the treetops cause flurries of leaves to fall in zigzagged paths like so many yellowish butterflies in a downward trajectory, making the forest seem alive with animal-like behavior. The longer and thinner leaves of the elms and ashes come spinning down like miniature tornados. It is still early-autumn so some of the leaves contain traces of yellow-green but most are the handsome but muted yellow, brown, tan and reds that remain after the tree suck all the carbohydrates out of them to fuel next spring’s regrowth. The leaves on the forest floor look soft and inviting like they await children to roll in soft piles, then giggle and toss them in the air. When all our grandchildren arrive for Thanksgiving, I’ll try to have an extra large pile for their romping. But when they leave, I’ll scatter these leaves again to complete their natural cycle of returning their minerals to the earth. The leaves will decompose and release the minerals that can then be taken up through the tree roots to produce shiny new, green leaves for worms to munch next spring.
If we lived in the city, our neighbors would scowl at our unraked leaves blowing onto their lawn. But here in the country woods, the leaves are free to do their own thing and nobody complains. In the city, leaves are evil little things that pile up on lawns to be raked, sacked, hauled and burned in some landfill. But the nutrient cycle is broken in city lawns so that artificial fertilization is required to replace minerals carried away with the leaves. Well OK, city leaves are just as pretty as country leaves but it may be that country leaves have more fun.
The forest is hardening in preparation for winter. The oaks, dogwoods, beauty-berries, redbuds, elms, ashes and basswoods have little use for leaves in winter. But the yaupon and Water Oaks hold their leaves through the winter until the spring sap begins to flow under the bark and triggers a new crop of leaves.
With my feet propped up on the railing of the deck, I look up after one of the stronger breezes and watch as a small Cedar Elm leaf floats down and delicately lands in my lap. Then, a larger Post Oak leaf drifts down slowly enough so that I can catch it in midair. Leaves from almost all of the forest trees take temporary refuge on my elevated deck. But, when stronger breezes find their way through the forest, they blow the leaves from the deck onto the leaf-littered soil floor where they belong. Later in the winter, when there are even fewer leaves on most trees, the strong north winds will howl through the forest and blow some of the leaves from the small open spaces into more secretive places beneath the brier and Muscadine grape vines and under the Yaupon and Possum Haw thickets where the armadillos will root through them looking for juicy worms. The squirrels will also rake the leaves looking for the Mockernut and Pignut hickory nuts and assorted acorns that they hid in the fall. Then the winter rains and an occasional light snow will wet the leaves which softens them for easier consumption by the insects, earthworms, fungi, and bacteria.
Wishing to feel the warming rays of the sun, I slouch in a chair on the open deck whereby mid-morning the sun penetrates the surrounding canopy. Sunshine falls fully on the skin of my face that has seen much too much sunshine during its life. But feeling that some soft autumnal sunlight is unlikely to do much more harm to that old wrinkled skin, I look up from the roofless deck through the opening in the tree canopy over the house and think of a song. “The sky is the only roof I have over my head” spins through the synapses of those few, still-working neurons in that gray matter between the ears. I feel a sense of well-being and that all is well in this little part of the world. Life is good!
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