Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Cycles

Brown.
Branches swathed in snow.
Squirrel's feet creating tiny avalanches.

White.
Flower clusters cradled in fresh green leaves.
Bees humming, birds returning.

Green.
Shaded shelter from the heat.
Cats lazing in sunny patches.

Amber.
Leaves fade while berries darken.
Birds and squirrels reap the bounty.

Thus is the cycle of the seasons as depicted by two trees in my backyard. The picture above was taken two days ago and already the leaves have lost almost all their green and glow a golden yellow against the gray sky, shimmering slightly with the rain.

It's perfect knitting weather. Sweaters and scarves and blankets hastily dug out of drawers and closets. Skeins of wooly goodness scrounged from the yarn stash, patterns mulled, needles engaged.

Some of that has been happening here. More to come.

Meanwhile, anyone know what kind of tree is shown in the picture? I never have figured it out for sure. I just admire how the pair of them mark the seasons. My own personal art gallery.

6 comments:

Missamite said...

It looks like a crabapple tree to me. I love mine.

PNWBookGirl said...

I'm with Melissa - crabapple. Though our ornamental crabapples have been picked clean by a swarm of Bohemian Waxwings as of last week. Took them a couple of weeks to do it too. They were the ones that were doing suicide runs at the front window.

Knit for Joy said...

Hmmm, maybe. I've never seen crabapples this small, though. THe berries are about the size of a large blueberry. Right now they're kind of orange, but by December/January they'll be bright red and all the leaves will be gone. Somewhere around February, the robins come in and clean both trees completely in about a day. They get drunk and do the window diving thing. LOL The squirrels eat a lot of them, too.

Sharon said...

I think what you've got there is a hawthorne.

msubulldog said...

I have to agree with Sharon. We have 3 Hawthornes in our yard and they are really quite pretty. :)

JustJen said...

I'm wondering if you've got pyracantha - especially since you mentioned birds getting drunk from eating the berries?

My sis and I used to giggle madly at the birds outside of our grandmother's front window, doing a combo stagger-fly-oops! dance, after eating the berries off of her huge pyracantha bushes.

http://tinyurl.com/ylc9xbz and http://tinyurl.com/yzmvrod for pics