Fall Colours
It is just like me to post about fall colours at the end of fall. But, as they say, better late than never.
When I first moved to the Midwest, I dreaded the fall because it marked the end of sandals and served as a reminder of impending winter freeze. Slowly but surely, I have begun to look forward to the falling leaves, the earthy tones and the crisp in the air. Below, I am appreciating a fallen leaf. . .
On the flip side, I was not so appreciative while helping my dad rake the leaves on our lawn. It made me wonder how nature can be so inefficient. All the leaves change colour, shrivel up, fall and then will have to regrow again next spring. While raking millions (or was it tens of millions?) of fallen leaves, I contemplated that fall is can be a lot of wasted effort. There has to be an easier way. . .
On a random note, this is a picture I took last week of unidentified crop (some type of wild barley or oats?) swaying in the fall breeze . . .
When I first moved to the Midwest, I dreaded the fall because it marked the end of sandals and served as a reminder of impending winter freeze. Slowly but surely, I have begun to look forward to the falling leaves, the earthy tones and the crisp in the air. Below, I am appreciating a fallen leaf. . .
On the flip side, I was not so appreciative while helping my dad rake the leaves on our lawn. It made me wonder how nature can be so inefficient. All the leaves change colour, shrivel up, fall and then will have to regrow again next spring. While raking millions (or was it tens of millions?) of fallen leaves, I contemplated that fall is can be a lot of wasted effort. There has to be an easier way. . .
On a random note, this is a picture I took last week of unidentified crop (some type of wild barley or oats?) swaying in the fall breeze . . .
9 Comments:
BTW the picture of you holding the leaf didn't really turn out for some reason but it may have been my comp.
Nature inefficient? Undoubtedly the process seems inefficient from the standpoint that the tree may not have to waste so much energy by regrowing the leaves. However, those cells are not designed to withstand the cold temperatures and thus it is the only way for the tree to live through the natural life cycle of the world. Plus the leaves just get absorbed into the ground again and the nutrients return to the soil. That is when someone isn't screwing up the balance of nature and raking up all the darn leaves! So my advice to you is you are just creating more work for yourself by cleaning up the leaves. If you let all the leaves stand, nature would do the job for you.
To me, the turning of fall is the best time of year. Most people feel it to be almost as bad as winter because everything is dying. But to me it just shows you that even in death, life will be born again, and that it is only the natural cycle of things. Life will go on.
Eric
How can you be calling nature inefficient when that implies that intelligent design is an unsubstantiated theory?
I'm not sure how nature being inefficient would place suspect on intelligent design. But perhaps there was sarcasm in the statement. In which case, if you dislike intelligent design, just tell anyone about your appendix. To me that mostly proves evolution and disproves intelligent design.
Intelligent Design is a brilliant idea because there is no way to disprove it. It is a very unspecific supposition or presumption. This sarcastic letter from the editors of Scientific American describes this problem well: (Thanks Dals for the link)
"ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells."
So, if it does turn out that nature isn't really efficient. Does that mean that the design is just not very intelligent?
No it just means that man should take over for nature, because he is so efficient. Thus, everything thing that man does that impacts the environment would be good, because it has to be an improvement over nature. Wait ... this is starting to sound like a conservative view of the environment. Who came up with this intelligent design idea ;)
on a different note, how did you colour that picture you took of the fall leaf?
and since there is so much talk on nature, etc. Here is Hobbe's take on why man was made.
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ch/1994/ch941111.gif
What was I saying that fall is almost over? And some people don't believe in global warming!
Ligne - The leaf was out of focus. So, I did what any smart photographer does with a bad picture -- digitally remaster it. This is what happens with the edge function on microsoft picture editor.
Excellent colors on the second pic - makes it look very edible!
fall in the midwest is so beautiful. brings back many memories.
come visit me sometme:
http://salamdhaka.blogpost.com
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