Last week I noticed that some of the trees around town looked like they wanted to change color. I chalked it up to the way the sun was hitting them on my drive home. After all, it had only been about 6 weeks since July 4th. This week it’s pretty obvious that there are some trees already changing color. All of our neighbor’s trees are already turning color in addition to the numerous sightings along my route to and from work.
Being as this is still August, I thought it seemed a bit early and maybe an indicator of a long winter. I went and checked last year and surprisingly found no difference in the timing between the two years. So, that means that in about 2-3 weeks, all of the trees in town should be showing their fall colors.
Speaking of fall, on the way to work today I became curious why this is the only season that we have two names to describe – fall and autumn. I can’t think of another name for spring, summer, or winter in the English language. I headed over to Wikipedia only to find out that in the past there has been a third name associated with the season: harvest. Earlier uses of harvest eventually changed to autumn. Autumn is the preferred use in scientific or literary contexts…or to put it another way, the formal or official term for the season. Interestingly though, the term fall is mainly used in North America whereas other parts of the world use the term Autumn. I didn't really find an answer to my question, except for the fact that the U.S. says 'fall' and England 'Autumn'. It's just one of those things that changed over time like color or colour, theater or theatre.
Fall is our favorite time of the year. The colors change, the weather gets crisp and cool, and everything starts up again (school, sports, pumpkin spice lattes for Stacey, etc). September is by far my favorite month. In a few weeks, I’ll be sure to post some pictures of the Autumn Blaze Maple tree in our front yard, our trip to the Happy Apple Farm (the harvest), and another trip to the mountains. Since we received so much rain this year, I’m curious to see how that will affect the colours, er, colors. Hopefully we won’t get a freeze early on and we can enjoy them for at least a few weeks.