Yellow leaves among the green- Week 25: Holms on the Potomac

 

Dorothy must have gone from Kansas to Maryland--it's truly the "Emerald City."

This beautiful tree is the "black tupelo."

On many Maryland roads, summertime driving feels like the Emerald City—highways are lined on both sides with thick, towering woods. Different species of trees show off varied shades of dark green, many muffled up in the verdant embrace of smothering kudzu. It’s green as far as your eye can see, until it hits the blue sky. The weather has become gloriously cooler and less humid.  

But one day – along about August 8—I felt, rather than saw, the odd slant of sunlight that says summer will not, cannot, last forever.  A few yellow leaves popped out among the green, and some of those leaves drifted to the ground.  (We can't resist buying produce from the farmers market--even though they cost about $2.50 each! We miss our garden tomatoes and Sunnyslope peaches.)

Now, crickets whir constant background music, and the cicadas are quieter. Their song has reduced to a low rhythmic staccato—a roomful of senior citizens twisting on child-proof pill bottles. By noon they’re a herd of three-year-olds riding hot wheel bicycles up and down a driveway, and in the evening they wind down to two-way static, like a couple of out-of-tune radios arguing about the same call letters, over and over. I admit it—when it gets cold, I’ll miss the cicadas!

Most mornings are cool and refreshing, not sticky and humid. Flowers like the colorful and plentiful crape myrtles and hydrangeas are fading a bit, and there’s a slant to the sun that says, “Fall is coming, the sun is dropping to the south.” Autumn is knocking at the door. With so many leaves to come down, Maryland is getting an early start.

Many of these large webs weigh down the trees here. Scientists say moth caterpillars spin these to foil predatory birds.