seasons

Here's something interesting about this part of the country that I've never truly witnessed before. The landscape changes. With each shifting of the seasons, it's like we're living on a different planet.

In the summer, fields flourish. They are shades of green: sage, lime green, forest green, like a patchwork quilt. They heighten, and for a moment at certain angles around certain bends, you can't even see how far they sprawls, because the corn grows so fast, four feet, seven feet, twelve feet. The trees grow these leafy crowns that tumble like curls and bounce in the wind. They become full and turn into tunnels over narrow, winding roads, the kind where you only catch glimpses of the blue sky above, and the sun winks through mottled shadows. Every where there is life. It isn't just spring that's for flowers. In the spring, it's the hydrangeas, the crocuses, the daffodils. In the summer, wildflowers with fairy-tale names, like Queen Anne's lace and touch-me-nots and scarlet pimpernels. In the fall, mums and ranaculus in every pot by every front door. All year long, with the exception of winter, flowers line the walkways, bushes burst with color, and in the spring trees shed flowers like they do leaves in the fall; it's as if they are in competition with each other. 

And now it's autumn. I'm ever grateful for this turning of seasons; it keeps my mind fresh and new. The leaves have started their twirling descent, the gray days last longer and bring a coolness to the breeze, and soon trees will be bare, completely. The grass will stop growing a full inch in one day and  insects will quiet their songs. Instead, we'll hear the honk of geese as they acknowledge these ancient signs that winter approaches. The crops will be harvested and the fields will look empty. No longer patchwork, but homogenous and empty, echoing. The earth's palette will be subdued, grey and purple and beige and olive. It will be beautiful in its own way. Suddenly, you can see the sky through the tree tunnels again. 

This change happens so slowly and is so welcomed, I hardly noticed last year. We had a late summer and the leaves didn't really change colors, they just sort of died, turned brown, and then finally fell off in December. It wasn't quite what I was hoping for, but the summer heat had been so fierce that the cooler temperatures were all I cared about. But when spring came, it seemed to happen overnight. What strikes me as the oddest thing is that I will be driving in an area that has been familiar for months, and suddenly it is unrecognizable. One day in May, on our drive down a country lane to the nearest grocery store, I realized this. Even though I'd driven this way countless times before, it looked so different. Everything was green! And the trees' spindly arms were no longer visible! I pointed this out to the kids: "Hey guys! Remember that big tree there in the winter, how it was bare? Now look at it... it's so full and heavy with leaves, it's hunching down close to the road like a big beast!" They shrieked and giggled and pointed out the windows at other things that had changed and sprouted and expanded, things that had been gray and bleak and were now colored in.

I'm noticing the change again, but this time it's so different. Even though this is a season for dying things, it's breathing a new life in me.