10/12/11 BACK TO FALL COLORS, AND BACK TO THE '60'S IN MY CHEVY V8

ELEVENTH STREET HILLSIDE

QUAKING ASPEN

SUMAC

WHITE ASH

A RED AND A SUGAR MAPLE?

...NO, BOTH SUGAR MAPLES

Wednesday, 7:45 AM.  55 degrees, wind S, calm at ground level but rain clouds moving in slowly at altitude. The sky was red in the east at dawn.  We just had a brief rain shower, the barometer is down and it looks like it will be a rainy day, off and on at least.  It is dry and we need the rain before the ground freezes.
    Now that the parade is over and the scarecrows patiently await Halloween, it is time to get back to appreciating fall color, which is beginning to fade and will be gone soon.  The weather, particularly night temperatures, have been unseasonably warm, and the hammer is sure to drop, and suddenly bring a jolt of reality to the Northland. 
    A heavy rainstorm, sudden freezing temperatures, or gusty winds and the leaves will all come tumbling down like the wall of Jericho at the blast of Joshua’s trumpet.
    The white ash, Fraxinus americana, exhibits pinkish purple to deep purple fall foliage, while the green ash, F. pennsylvanica, clear yellow.  The aspens, far more numerous than green ash on our hillsides, are clear golden yellow but are dropping their leaves quickly now.  Red maples, Acer rubrum, of course are characteristically red, and sugar maple, A. saccharnum, golden yellow to orange, usually heavily tinged with pink.  So it is relatively easy to look at a hillside and point out red and sugar maples in the fall.  Or so it would seem, but sugar maple leaves often turn as  red as red maples, and then there is the black maple, either a separate species or a variation of the sugar maple (take your pick) to add to the uncertainty. I always declare the fall color of sumac leaves to be cerise, but that only describes the leaves of the older, mature plants.  The leaves of  young growth can be a whole palette of colors from pink to orange to  yellow to red, often on the same compound leaves!
    So a lot of us  pretend to know what trees we are looking at from a distance in their fall attire, but truth to tell we might be better off, and far more truthful, if we just described the glorious colors and left out the nomenclature.
    I guess the same comment could apply to current politics.  Candidates, critics, pundits… all pretend to be able to ascribe colors and shades of colors to people and issues when in fact most situations today are far too fluid to positively define them in the moment.  I am certainly guilty of that from time to time. 
    At present when I look at the news I often feel I am in some sort of a time warp and have been transported back to the ‘60’s in my '57 Chevy V8, God forbid!
    I don't think even the promise of renewed youth could entice me to repeat that turmoil, and I probably would not survive that Chevy V8 another time around anyway.