The Colours

Before the fullness of the fall, comes the golding. 

Photo Credit: Hamlin Grange

That moment when our shrubs and trees take on various shades of gold. It’s fleeting, a moment glimpsed before the main event. 

The golding takes place in that space between the vivid greens of spring and summer and the reds and oranges of autumn.  It’s a minor act leading up to the big attraction that inspires the gorgeous adjectives. 

I honour the golding, observing how it lights up the ground in mid-October, how it  repeats itself in the sister-colours of leaves on vines and trees that will never turn red or orange, but give their own light. The birches and some maples, for example. 

Soon will come the stars of autumn, those brilliant-coloured leaves that appear in an explosion of glory — clothing large trees and small shrubs and instilling feelings of warmth and wonder in…