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Autumn Crescendo

© Marge Talt

The music of autumn is played in a different key than that of spring. Although both begin softly and build to a crescendo, spring's song is sweet and high, while autumn's is a more complex ballad, changing key and rhythm as the music builds. Autumn includes the mellow minor keys, totally absent in spring, as well as a touch of melancholy among the brassy highs. It's a subtle season and spring is not. Spring's changes burst upon us; autumn's are wrought more slowly as our plants descend into winter's sleep.

I can tell when summer has ended and the autumn song begun. One day, I will look out of my window at the woods to find that the solid green wall that has greeted me each day is suddenly penetrable, the green tinged with yellows and rusts.

Evening light becomes golden as the sun goes down, warming the colors in the garden. The days grow shorter. Chilly nights foretell what is to come, then give way to warmth once more. I rush about frantically, hauling tender potted plants inside, only to reverse the trip a day or so later when temperatures rise again. The warning is there, however...time is drawing near when all tender plants must be snug in their winter quarters.

Plants who have lived rather unobtrusively all summer, suddenly announce themselves.

Campsis radicans is hosted by two monstrous Chamaecyparis pisifera 'Filifera Nana' who engulf our front entry steps. In summer, it's hardly noticed as an entity - only the bright red-orange flowers announce its presence. As the year wanes, the foliage lightens and changes from green to soft gold, a sudden soprano solo accompanied by the bass note of the Chamy's dark moss green needles.

Mundane green leaves on an unknown native shrub, who populates wood and garden (when I let it), slowly join the orchestra as they change to lemon yellow. Red drupes form singly on the branches to be eaten by wildlife or drop to the ground to sprout readily in spring.

This unknown will become a large shrub, if allowed. Two have been permitted to mark the corners of our parking area. Unprepossessing all year, they are granted their space solely for the autumn high note, when they become shimmering yellow globes, briefly but magnificently. When all leaves have changed to yellow, they fall quickly, leaving smooth gray barked stems that become strangely pitted with age.