The Changing of the Leaves

Yesterday I looked up for a moment from texting while driving through the San Miguel Canyon and I noticed that the trees are already showing the first signs of change. So you know what that means. Right, I got a ticket for texting while driving. LOL.

I say the trees were changing but really it was only the leaves. The trees stay their boring old colors. But trees are sure amazing. They make wood and fruit and squirrels. They provide shade and sticks. Some have houses right in them. They even make oxygen in their spare time. They are like little factories, except they run silently and cleanly, and they don't have parking lots around them.

Some trees get really, really big. My wife's sister and her husband live in a state called California, and there are some super big trees in a park near their house. We all went to see some. It is estimated that if you were to cut just one of these trees down, the lumber produced would make thousands of environmental activists pounce on you. We saw one that the four of us could not even join hands and reach all the way around. That's partly because I wasn't about to try any activity that might possibly include my brother-in-law holding my wife's hand.

But why, you may ask, do leaves change color? That is because in the spring they are full of a substance called chloroform. Over the summer the chloroform leaks out gradually. In some places they collect it to make pancake syrup. Where does the greenness go? Bugs eat it up. Then birds eat the bugs. Then the birds fly south for the winter. When they come back in the spring they bring the greenness with them. It's all part of the circle of life. Why do some leaves turn yellow and others turn red? Nobody knows. It might have something to do with beetles.

So watch carefully over the next few weeks and you too will see the amazing beauty of the fall colors. That is if you are not texting.

If you would like to know where the white goes when the snow melts look up 'Some Snow Science' under YahooContributorNetwork (that's on the internet).