TIME TO CLEAN-UP "THE FALL"

It's Fall, i.e. Autumn, and the leaves are falling! These two street-type maples dropped almost everything in a couple of days after a cold spell and a heavy rain.

We have a several dogwoods and they are quick to drop their leaves too, taking turns according to their specific variety. That helps with the raking/mowing chore the mess requires.

The larger trees - ornamental cherries, the zelcova sawtooth (a type of elm), the Chinese elm, and others - are just getting started. These take their time and dribble loads like this for two or three weeks, so they take a lot more time to clean up after. Worse yet are the Austrian Pines which hold dead needles until a strong wind blows which causes them to foul the lawn with needles and cones. Ugly mess.

Finally, is the interesting ginko biloba tree, said to be an ancient contemporary if the dawn redwood, both of which come from somewhere in central Asia. Long thought to be extinct, once rediscovered they have become quite popular as a landscape tree and the leaves are reputed to be an aid to memory. Ask any herbal pill shop. The curious part is that our tree will cling to its odd shaped leaves until the first heavy frost and will then drop them all (99%) overnight. We haven't had a strong frost yet, as you can tell.

We love the brilliant hues of this season, and 2009 has been especially colorful. Still, all the leaves eventually come down, must be gathered, and eventually end up as compost for the garden or as fodder for a nearby worm farm. Would it sound too morbid to point out that this is pretty much the story of our lives? We start out as seedlings, struggle a while as we grow tall, eventually come into a more or less colorful prime, worry all the time about broken limbs and such, and at the end we all become compost. Hmmmm. Were it not for God's intervening Grace, we would have no hope at all. I prefer thinking about what our creator's wonderful craftsmanship can make of us if we conform to the touch of His hands. You can become a work of beauty if you conform to His will. Our destiny can be in a place of honor and splendor; it need not be a worm farm after all.