I love fall. Daisy, my neighbor’s dog, and I took a walk this morning because I’m trying to get back into shape after being sedentary too long after a recent hospital stay. We walked along an old oil topped road that runs beside my property. There is about a half mile of frontage from front gate to back and we walked toward the back gate. Along side the road with my land on the right, it changes from pasture to an old forest, with trees that stretch their giant limbs over the road we walk along. The County Agricultural Extension Agent says there are some trees there that are 200 and 300 hundred years old. It’s fun to look at them and think, when George Washington was crossing the Delaware these same trees were here looking out into the world (unaware of George and his problems with those pesky British of course).
We all like the fall colors but it’s the variety and contrast that always makes me smile. On one of the larger, and I’m sure older oak trees, I could see a vine of poison ivy that all through the spring and summer had slowly made it’s way from the ground up round and round the oak, working it’s way out of the shade provided by the tree skyward to the bright rewarding sunlight. It must have taken months to reach the upper canopy. I’m sure all summer long it went unnoticed, with its bright green leaves closely matching the oak leaf color, but NOW all the oak leaves have turned a mustardy yellow ochre and THAT IVY VINE is a bright orange and neon crimson burst of color, looking like a beautiful string of beads wrapped round a roaring twenties party doll on her way to dance the night away at the speakeasy just down the road.
It’s that contrast that Nature or God paints with that make us all wonder. I’ve met some people in my life that calling them “poison ivy” would be a compliment, but with patience and purpose in their lives, they were transformed unexpectedly, and brightened their surroundings with accomplishment and a strong contrast to…well, you get the idea. My, my, what a beautiful world we live in.
