The other day, warm London sunshine…under the plane trees…
Today a definite freshness in the air… And the much anticipated autumn glow up at local supermarket car park might not last very long, with this chilly wind! Now my friend did tell.me what those spectacular maples are called… Let me just look it up, nope – it’s something like autumn golden glow…These did hang around beautifully last year (it was a windless time) along with the gorgeous red cherry tree leaves which may disappear more quickly this year too.
I had a funny thought – Are leaves called leaves because for deciduous trees at least they leave the tree in Autumn!?!? I wonder…
And the tree leaves them on the ground, so that in the natural cycle of things the dead leaves’ nutrients can be recycled back into the trees roots, eventually. Sheltering all sorts of grubs and caterpillars and larvae – in short all sorts of food for blackbirds and robins… Have you ever seen or heard them and or hedgehogs rustling away, turning over what we gardeners call “leaf litter” to find their next meal?? (We had a hedgehog my hubby called Russel. )
Now isn’t “leaf litter” a little bit of a pejorative term… ?? Um, one I wonder whether the RHS might rephrase some day soon, like weeds are now in officially forbes (sp.?) and pernicious weeds are highly successful & native plants “) 🌿☘️🍀
All to the well and good – we really need to appreciate what we’ve got in terms of successful native resilient plants.
And above all we need to as much as we possibly can, as gardeners itching to tidy, to leave the leaves!! LEAVE THE LEAVES!! Under the trees 🍁🍂💞🍁🍂
