dancing leaves

[asakiyume]

The oak leaves are starting to fall. If there's even a little breeze, they travel, and they do it by spinning round, like maple-seed helicopters, or by becoming tiny sails and moving straight forward, and sometimes by sashaying side-to-side, like a person enjoying the feel of their hips. They're hard to catch, dipping away just when you think you might grab one: "uh-uh-ohh, no-no!" they seem to say.

There was a family out raking their lawn together: a mother, father, grandmother, and little toddler. The mother clapped a falling oak leaf in her hands and I clapped for her success and gave her the thumbs up, and she smiled and waved.

wakanomori caught a red-oak leaf and asked me to carry it home with me (he was going on a longer run than I was), and on my way back, I caught a white-oak leaf. The various species of red oaks have pointy leaves; the white oaks have rounded ones. Friendship between red and white! (In Japan, those are the two sides that are always fighting each other.)

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In Finland and Russia at the turn of the 20th also.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ha! Good point! And in the War of the Roses, too.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

And the two chess sets in Through the Looking Glass are the red and the white, as well. :)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Since you mention oak leaves........

http://cmcmck.livejournal.com/433596.html

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ahhh--so lovely!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

The perfect time of year for it too!

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

I still see green on maples here, but the oak leaves are turning brown.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The Norway maples seem to hang onto their leaves longest.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Around here at the moment, it's the purple and the red - purple from the jacarandas and red from the Illawarra flame trees.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, those must be so, so beautiful. What visual riches.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Ah ha; I did not know that about the pointed vs rounded to tell reds from whites!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The acorns from red oaks have a *sharper* taste, too!

[snakypoet]

Fascinating to read of such different landscape from my own. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That's one of the many excellent things about being online--I feel the same way.

acorns

[coldhighmountainwind.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

We have an over abundance of red oak acorns this year. They are like ball bearings underfoot on our walking paths.

Re: acorns

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes, this really has been an excellent year for acorns!

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

We have a surprising number of red leaves this year. Most years, the leaves just turn brown.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I wonder what makes some years better than others? It's got to be something having to do with temperature, or amount of rainfall, or some combination of things like that, but I don't know precisely what it is.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love your description--I not only see the leaves, but the person dancing!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

They have as many different moves as a dancer, for sure.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

That seems rather a good omen, I think. I hope circumstance bears out my prediction.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I hope so, too.