If you look out your south window at 4 a.m., you'll see Orion. But most people, even if they don't like nature, even if they don't watch, they will see that almost all the leaves are down. Why is that?
I have kept track of leaf fall for 40 years in this small corner I live in, in the lower Midwest, and even though every year is slightly different — and some years are majorly different — this year and the years ahead, even with global warming, are likely to be similar.
There are some exceptions. Of course, some ginkgos will hold out an extra week or two. And sweet gum trees, well, they're terrible. They break the rules all the time. But if you walk in the woods, you'll find the canopy has disappeared. All those places that the cicadas sat and sang in the summertime, they're gone. And along with the leaves, of course, you'll notice that there aren't any cicadas. There may not be any insect singing at all in the nights if they're really cold.
So something amazing is happening.
And it all happened just within a few days of early fall, and suddenly, a month ago, you realized, hey, something's going on here. The leaves are turning. And within three weeks, not only do they turn, they come down in the whole world, the picture, the landscape, the palette of the entire world in the lower middle west, deep into the South, sometimes certainly deep into the North. The land is bare. That's what happens in Early Fall, and it's a pivot that turns the whole world from a nice green, warm place into a slightly different spot.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will's Almanack. I'll be back again with more notes about this strange world that's being transformed before our eyes. In the meantime, take some notes yourself. What happened in your yard?
