What About This . . .? By Wayne William Cipriano
This is a colorful fall season, and local trees are vibrant with a variety of bright yellows, oranges, reds, deep purples and rich greens. These radiant trees are located at the intersection of Y and 5 Highways, in front of the Municipal Pool and City Park.
Colors! Reds and yellows and golds and browns and just enough greens. And, if we put aside a few moments just after dawn and just before sunset to look, we get to see the sunlight dyed with the colors as it moves almost horizontally through the woods adding a golden sheen to the already breathtaking palette.
We’ve had just plain beautiful weather – just enough rain without a deluge to wipe out the fences and county road, warm following cold, then warm following cold again, and cool on the calendar coming up.
We often experience winds accompanying significant temperature shifts as fronts, both cold and warm, move past us. Hopefully, the winds that always seem to blow those leaves down will abate for a week or two, but they never do – always coming far too soon.
Some plants and trees move through their life cycle according to air temperature changes, some rely on the duration and intensity of sunlight, others are directed by the amount of water that is available to them. Those that change seasonally do so at different rates depending on those varying environmental factors of temperature, light, water and so on and thus, it is difficult to predict when the “perfect” time of year for color will occur.
Our daughter, Renee`, stayed with us for a month and experienced pretty much all the weather conditions you can think of except ice and snow. And don’t you know it, just as soon as she left, the colors really came out in force. For a while, we felt badly that she had missed what seems to be a record-setting color riot this year, and then we remembered that she was returning to New England where fall foliage is not just beautiful each year, it is spectacular to the point of bringing commercial benefits to just about everyone who lives there due to the annual migration of autumn tourists who follow the media-broadcasted “Perfect Color Line” south.
As I think back nostalgically to my days living in New England, I am losing the feelings of regret I was entertaining regarding Renee` having missed our Ozark Autumn as I realize she is returning to hers. Ours would have been but a pre-lim.
Say, is anyone interested in a road trip?
