EMERGING FROM LEAFY CURTAINS

     Suburban areas in southeastern Pennsylvania are beautiful with the colored leaves of planted red maple, sugar maple, pin oak and sweet gum trees, burning bush and barberry bushes and other kinds of trees and bushes from mid-October toward the end of November.  It's a joy to me to drive through local suburbs at that time to see autumn foliage brightening that human-made habitat, even during gloomy days.  The warm colors on the leaves of those woody plants are another overwhelming beauty of nature, even in human-made suburbs.   

     Red maples, pin oaks and burning bushes have brilliantly-red foliage in autumn.  Sugar maples present orange leaves.  And sweet gums and barberries are striking with red, maroon and yellow foliage, all colors on each plant.         

     Much of the beautiful fall foliage clings to its twig moorings for a few weeks, then flutters and side-slips to the ground, where it creates crispy, colorful blankets of dead, fallen leaves.  And as those leaves fall away like a curtain dropping, planted coniferous trees peek out more prominently.  Those planted evergreen trees, most commonly Norway spruces, white pines and arborvitae, are a lovely, dark backdrop for the warmly-colored deciduous foliage that are left on their trees and bushes.  As one set of beauty drops away, another one comes into view.   

     As more and more deciduous leaves fall from their trees, the handsome shapes and colors of the conifers become ever more visible as each day goes by.  Soon the beauties of the needled evergreens dominate the suburbs, highlighted by bare deciduous boughs.

     Conifers catch and hold heaps of falling snow on their thickly-needled limbs.  That snow melts during warmer afternoons, then freezes again in the cooling evenings, creating innumerable, translucent and sparkling icicles that are so lovely to see, right at home.

      And in the suburbs, a variety of wintering birds, including mourning doves, red-tailed hawks, dark-eyed juncos, American robins, starlings and other species spend winter nights nestled in densely-needled spruce and arborvitae trees that protect them from cold wind and owls.  And long-eared, saw-whet and great horned owls rest in conifers by day.  There the owls are more likely to avoid the harassment of jays, crows and other kinds of birds that would heckle the owls if they found them.  

     Red to yellow sunrises and sunsets, in winter, accentuate the silhouetted beauties of the graceful lengths of bare deciduous branches and the pyramid and columnar shapes of the evergreens.  During some winter sunsets, I have seen groups of doves and individual red-tails sweeping into tall conifers for the night.  And I have noted little groups of long-eared owls leaving evergreens, one by one, at dusk for a night of hunting mice.  

     Deciduous and coniferous trees in our suburban areas are lovely in autumn going into winter.  They are well worth seeing, wherever they may be.     

           

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