I am always fascinated by the fall foliage. Green is the color of our planet’s plant life duty-bound in photosynthesis, which single-handedly feeds the biosphere with fruitful bounties in variegated colors, shapes and packages. Go to the supermarket and you will find a sample display. When the autumn’s cold front sweeps our hemisphere, green begins turning orange, yellow or red, as if a great hand of artisan has just paint brushed our landscape of forestry. The heavenly painting is relentless even in late October days.
Leaves filled with nano-crayons of orange, yellow or red pigments wave in the autumn breeze, in full anticipation for the moment of imminent severance from the tree branches. The tree is like one close-knit family, and the leaves are the productive members busily synthesizing carbohydrates before the enforced furlough. In Mother Nature’s grand scheme of mystery, leaves cleave to the tree for a season of work. And then, in one last spell of cold chill, leaves leave the tree for a season of Sabbath, before masquerading in life’s resilient rebirth in the coming spring.
Leaves land as soon as the gravity and wind jointly solve the complex differential equations of dancing trajectory in the wind. Leaves donate the last atom in their trapping back to the sure turf, with full assurance that many new combinations of atoms will dance their way out at the first warm invitation to join life’s unending party.
Leaves never really leave. They change colors. They change locations. They play peekaboo. They re-emerge, full of the vigor of a new life.
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