The Trees in Autumn

My friend sent me this photo for the tree in his garden a few days back. His "burning bush" he called it. And it is. 

An autumn blaze of colours.

We haven’t experienced autumn in Ireland for some time.

Both Greece and Portugal kind of skip a proper autumn season.

Summer merges into winter over a scant few weeks.

The leaves turn a kind of muddy brown and then quickly drop off when there’s the first sign of wind.

Van Morrison sings about this wondrous Irish Autumn, full of golden glory, in “Orangefield”:

On a golden autumn day 

All my dreams came true, in Orangefield.

On a thrones of Ulster day 

You came my way in Orangefield,

And the sun 

Shone so bright

And it lit up all our lives.

The thing about autumn leaves is that they don’t actually change colour. Those glorious colours are already there within the leaf from springtime. It's simply that the green chlorophyll pigment dominates during the days of spring and summer. With the ending of summer, the chlorophyll production switches off, and those orange, yellow and amazing reds, emerge in all their glory.

Makes me think how we move through the seasons of life, and a different sort of glory emerges when we get older and into the autumn of life. That's a nice way to think about this age we're in, when all the world seems consumed by the energy and excitement of youth. Hmmm, yes. I think the autumn colours suit me.