Beauty and Disappointment of Nature in Fall
My husband, John, and I came back to our new home in Colorado after a week away. Before we left, the aspens in our yard had just barely started to turn. Still mostly green, a few edges of flickering coins yielding to yellow. The evergreens in the mountains around us had been spiked with patches of gold for a few weeks. We’d driven around reveling in the glory of them, looking forward to their splendor in our first fall here. But the trees in our yard and others in our neighborhood were slower to turn. I wondered why. Altitude? Moisture? Our friend Alan had told us shortly after we’d moved in that we wouldn’t believe our luck when the grove in our yard turned that spectacular, shimmering gold. We left for Kansas City the night before we’d planned because the meteorologists predicted snow. Not just an early autumn dusting, but an actual winter storm. It wasn’t even the middle of October! But what did I expect in the Rockies? Our seven years in Los Angeles had ...