THE GREENING

     Several great natural events happen in southeastern Pennsylvania, each in its own time every year, including snowfalls, tremendous hordes of migrating snow geese in March, dandelions and buttercups covering many lawns and meadows in cheery yellow in May, millions of flashing male fireflies in June and July and an overwhelming abundance of colored leaves in October.  But to me the greatest of the great nature happening every year is the mundane greening of grass on lawns, alfalfa and red clover in hayfields and growing foliage on trees and shrubs early in May.  

     Although most of us take the greening every year for granted, the beauty of new, fresh green plants in May miraculously happens almost overnight.  The landscape is suddenly green as if by magic, because the vegetation grows so fast.  And it is lovely and refreshing in sunlight or during rain.  To me, the greening and sunlight together is the presence of God.  And, also miraculously, each kind of plant has its own shade of green, dictated by its genetic code. 

     Based on green pigment, chlorophyll, which causes photosynthesis, the using of sunlight to combine carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water to create sugar, green plants' self-made food for life, growth and reproduction, most of southeastern Pennsylvania, and much of the northern hemisphere, is bathed in green, a symbol of life.  

     And we get food from photosynthesis in green plants.  Simply by exhaling carbon dioxide, people and animals help grow their food because green plants take in that gas and turn it into sugar to grow.           Somehow green vegetation senses the increased amount of daylight and rising, average temperatures each successive day in spring.  That increased light and rising temperatures cause leaf buds to open quickly and other plants to grow rapidly.

     To me, green and blue represent peace, beauty and nature.  Green plants are life in great abundance.  And their fresh, new growth each year adds greatly to their beauties.

     Another beauty to me during the greening in May is the noticeable growth of new needles on the tip of each twig on pines, spruces, firs and other kinds of coniferous trees.  The lighter green of new needles beside the darker green of older needles is an annual beauty, and another sign of the greening.

     The fresh, new green growth of May is soon nibbled by insects, becomes dusty and worn during summer and finally dies and turns colors in autumn.  But that vegetation was also lovely in May.           

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