AUTUMN ARRIVES, LEAVES SOON WILL TAKE ON GORGEOUS COLORS
By Olivene Godfrey
Autumn, that titian-haired goddess, arrives this month and the season of the year brings thoughts of new clothes, football games, the hunting season and school activities with visits to the Northwest Georgia mountains that will soon be aflame with gold and red leaves.
Due to the warm, rainy weather we have had this past summer, everything outdoors is still green and fresh and pretty. But, with the cooler weather we are having now, the flamboyant show will soon begin when Mother Nature presents her fabulous leaf show. In strips of forests that bound fields like hedgerows, flamboyant reds and yellows brightened any dull evergreen greens blended together, creating treasures of autumn.
Most of us in this region take our colorful foliage for granted, not realizing it is sectionalized. I have read that only in the Eastern United States, Japan, Manchuria and parts pf South America does nature provide the peculiarities of climates. rainfall and temperature changes, that create the brilliant colors that are taken for granted by most of us.
In other parts of the world leaves turn from green to brown and that's it. Even in the western part of the U.S. a few species turn yellow, but the brilliant shades don't occur.
The true colors of deciduous tree leaves are covered in the spring and summer by chlorophyll and it's green. In the fall, of the year the sun doesn't shine as long each day as it does in spring and summer. So, trees can't make chlorophyll because it isn't warm enough. As the remaining chlorophyll breaks up, the true colors of leaves are revealed.
But, the breakdown of chlorophyll doesn't explain all the colors in the fall. It only accounts for the yellow, gold, orange and some reds. Blues, violets, dark reds, are due to chemical changes of a pigment and a sugar in the cells of trees.
I have also read that our mountains here that have beautiful colored leaves is the result of fortunate geography as the mountains run North and South while most of the worlds ranges run East and West.
Strolling through our own Northwest Georgia mountains, you can see the treasures of autumn up close. Somehow autumn has a different look when you walk through the forest and hear it and smell it and feel it.
I have always loved the month of October, with its brilliant blue skies and Indian Summer. It's a time of enchantment and poets have long sung its praises. I like Helen Hunt Jackson's poetic description:
"O Sum and skies and clouds of June:
And flowers of June together;
Ye cannot rival the one hour;
October's bright blue weather"
See you next time.
By Olivene Godfrey
Autumn, that titian-haired goddess, arrives this month and the season of the year brings thoughts of new clothes, football games, the hunting season and school activities with visits to the Northwest Georgia mountains that will soon be aflame with gold and red leaves.
Due to the warm, rainy weather we have had this past summer, everything outdoors is still green and fresh and pretty. But, with the cooler weather we are having now, the flamboyant show will soon begin when Mother Nature presents her fabulous leaf show. In strips of forests that bound fields like hedgerows, flamboyant reds and yellows brightened any dull evergreen greens blended together, creating treasures of autumn.
Most of us in this region take our colorful foliage for granted, not realizing it is sectionalized. I have read that only in the Eastern United States, Japan, Manchuria and parts pf South America does nature provide the peculiarities of climates. rainfall and temperature changes, that create the brilliant colors that are taken for granted by most of us.
In other parts of the world leaves turn from green to brown and that's it. Even in the western part of the U.S. a few species turn yellow, but the brilliant shades don't occur.
The true colors of deciduous tree leaves are covered in the spring and summer by chlorophyll and it's green. In the fall, of the year the sun doesn't shine as long each day as it does in spring and summer. So, trees can't make chlorophyll because it isn't warm enough. As the remaining chlorophyll breaks up, the true colors of leaves are revealed.
But, the breakdown of chlorophyll doesn't explain all the colors in the fall. It only accounts for the yellow, gold, orange and some reds. Blues, violets, dark reds, are due to chemical changes of a pigment and a sugar in the cells of trees.
I have also read that our mountains here that have beautiful colored leaves is the result of fortunate geography as the mountains run North and South while most of the worlds ranges run East and West.
Strolling through our own Northwest Georgia mountains, you can see the treasures of autumn up close. Somehow autumn has a different look when you walk through the forest and hear it and smell it and feel it.
I have always loved the month of October, with its brilliant blue skies and Indian Summer. It's a time of enchantment and poets have long sung its praises. I like Helen Hunt Jackson's poetic description:
"O Sum and skies and clouds of June:
And flowers of June together;
Ye cannot rival the one hour;
October's bright blue weather"
See you next time.
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