autumnal hours
Oct. 10th, 2013 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliAlong the highway, one tree, on a rocky slope, has turned bright yellow. Another, a ways long, had start to blush a soft orangish red amidst others still emeralds. From my window, I see a tree that is turning yellow as well -- ah, autumn arrives in August. As usual. As if on cue, the next day, yellow trees speckle the way.
The green is bright but it's lying absolutely smooth and flat on the ground, beneath the boughs, like a mirror, reveals that it is not undergrowth but algae that have engulfed a pool.
Driving along a way, I see aspens bright yellow, and am thinking it may be stressed when I realize: it's perched on a rockface. Hard though it was to tell, with the shrubs and the trees growing so vigorously. All along the way, with all the many rockfaces, the trees showed yellow, and a moment later, you can make out the rock.
A pear tree has its leaves withering toward brown. Every bough is heavy with pears -- pear after pears -- but the fruits are not yellow at all, but a brown barely touched with bronze.
A flock twitters through the air ahead -- each bird, with distance, is little more than a mote, but the mass of them forms a great cloud.
A lone branch reaches out, pure, bright red among a tree thick with green leaves -- and one other spring, behind the red, that's turning purple with autumn.
Overcast summer days are gloomy; overcast fall days show up the radiant colors. Days on the verge -- turn subtle. Beneath the gray, a tree with one burning orange bough, surrounded by gilt ones, and the mass of the trees still green, but a green brushed with gold. And a tree turning from deep green to deep red, and in its somber transformation reminding me that you can't see red and green at once in the same place.
A sky like deep blue ink, watered toward the edges and swiftly turning white on the horizon itself, with a single planet gleaming pure white just before the blue started to pale.
A flock flying against the sky. For a moment it looks, even in its lopsided-V shape, like sparrows, but as they fly along, though they look no larger, their long necks make it clear that they are geese. Even though the eyes can not adjust for size and they look like tiny goslings dark against the the sky.
A row of trees beside a parking lot. Almost all of them are flaming red on every bough, except for a few that are already skeletonal and bare, but one has only a patch of red, all but hidden from this side with its greenery.
Oaks lining a parking lot, and at a glance, approaching, they look green, but parking under them shows that yellow has enroached within the masses of leaves.
Geese flying against the sky, dark against the pallor, a blue almost white. The skein forms a single line with one goose to one side. But as they came honking a long -- the sound muted by distance -- it merged in, to form one seamless line across the sky.
A tree reaches out dead and leafless branches, but its trunk is swathed in scarlet, not an inch showing, as the vines turn the most brilliant of reds.
Midday sunlight slanting over trees -- turns some shiny to the point of whiteness, plungs others into shadow, shines through some in green and red and yellow -- and produces a discordant jumble of too many colors and lights.
A flock whirls through the air. Though they are flecks at their largest, and never approach, it is marvelous how much easier it is to see them at some points that when their wings are flat and level.
A tree is all scarlet and yellow, even in the twilight brilliantly colored, like an opal.
The sunset ends in misty and haze, so that all the sky is dusky blue, except near the horizon, where against a slate blue color dusky yellows and dusty roses are muted against the sky, and a single star gleams over all, pure and white.
Trudging along in an evening full of mist and drizzle. Off to the side, from along the brook where two willow coppices are ladened with branches, a whiteness takes wing. It takes a moment to look properly over and see the bird, and a moment longer when it could have been a hawk before shape and size resolve the pale, ghost-like form to a heron, flying upstream. . . flying fairly far, because there is no sign of it later when I've walked up to the point where it vanished among the pines.
Pink clouds spreading in great streams over the sky. The moon shines through one, a frail little crescent, with uncertain edges, but still pure white against the pink.
A tree quite blue with autumn -- the juniper is heavily laden with its slate-blue berries, more thickly than its needles.
The green is bright but it's lying absolutely smooth and flat on the ground, beneath the boughs, like a mirror, reveals that it is not undergrowth but algae that have engulfed a pool.
Driving along a way, I see aspens bright yellow, and am thinking it may be stressed when I realize: it's perched on a rockface. Hard though it was to tell, with the shrubs and the trees growing so vigorously. All along the way, with all the many rockfaces, the trees showed yellow, and a moment later, you can make out the rock.
A pear tree has its leaves withering toward brown. Every bough is heavy with pears -- pear after pears -- but the fruits are not yellow at all, but a brown barely touched with bronze.
A flock twitters through the air ahead -- each bird, with distance, is little more than a mote, but the mass of them forms a great cloud.
A lone branch reaches out, pure, bright red among a tree thick with green leaves -- and one other spring, behind the red, that's turning purple with autumn.
Overcast summer days are gloomy; overcast fall days show up the radiant colors. Days on the verge -- turn subtle. Beneath the gray, a tree with one burning orange bough, surrounded by gilt ones, and the mass of the trees still green, but a green brushed with gold. And a tree turning from deep green to deep red, and in its somber transformation reminding me that you can't see red and green at once in the same place.
A sky like deep blue ink, watered toward the edges and swiftly turning white on the horizon itself, with a single planet gleaming pure white just before the blue started to pale.
A flock flying against the sky. For a moment it looks, even in its lopsided-V shape, like sparrows, but as they fly along, though they look no larger, their long necks make it clear that they are geese. Even though the eyes can not adjust for size and they look like tiny goslings dark against the the sky.
A row of trees beside a parking lot. Almost all of them are flaming red on every bough, except for a few that are already skeletonal and bare, but one has only a patch of red, all but hidden from this side with its greenery.
Oaks lining a parking lot, and at a glance, approaching, they look green, but parking under them shows that yellow has enroached within the masses of leaves.
Geese flying against the sky, dark against the pallor, a blue almost white. The skein forms a single line with one goose to one side. But as they came honking a long -- the sound muted by distance -- it merged in, to form one seamless line across the sky.
A tree reaches out dead and leafless branches, but its trunk is swathed in scarlet, not an inch showing, as the vines turn the most brilliant of reds.
Midday sunlight slanting over trees -- turns some shiny to the point of whiteness, plungs others into shadow, shines through some in green and red and yellow -- and produces a discordant jumble of too many colors and lights.
A flock whirls through the air. Though they are flecks at their largest, and never approach, it is marvelous how much easier it is to see them at some points that when their wings are flat and level.
A tree is all scarlet and yellow, even in the twilight brilliantly colored, like an opal.
The sunset ends in misty and haze, so that all the sky is dusky blue, except near the horizon, where against a slate blue color dusky yellows and dusty roses are muted against the sky, and a single star gleams over all, pure and white.
Trudging along in an evening full of mist and drizzle. Off to the side, from along the brook where two willow coppices are ladened with branches, a whiteness takes wing. It takes a moment to look properly over and see the bird, and a moment longer when it could have been a hawk before shape and size resolve the pale, ghost-like form to a heron, flying upstream. . . flying fairly far, because there is no sign of it later when I've walked up to the point where it vanished among the pines.
Pink clouds spreading in great streams over the sky. The moon shines through one, a frail little crescent, with uncertain edges, but still pure white against the pink.
A tree quite blue with autumn -- the juniper is heavily laden with its slate-blue berries, more thickly than its needles.