My beloved mulberry tree had another gift for me this week.
This blog, of course, owes its name to the mulberry in front of my house. (See “Why Mulberry Jam?”) The masthead on this page is a photo of the tree in autumn. This fall my mulberry faithfully turned its usual spectacular shade of gold. You would laugh if you saw my photo library because it has WAY too many pictures of this tree. Every year I can’t resist taking another series of shots trying to capture the evanescent beauty of the turning leaves.
As it happens, this year we’ve had a very warm fall, with only a few light frosts all the way up through mid-November. As a result, the leaves have hung on much later than normal. Up until Saturday the mulberry held all its leaves, hovering protectively over the house and lighting up the whole street with the brilliance of their yellow color.
Finally on Sunday morning we woke up to a heavy frost with temperatures well below freezing. A light coating of silver lay over everything. From my kitchen window I looked out and saw the morning sun beginning to strike the tree. And then it started. As the sun warmed the leaves that were made heavy by their coating of frost, they began to fall. At first just a few here and there, but in a few minutes, the tree was creating a rain of golden heart-shaped leaves. There was no breeze, so the leaves fell straight down to the ground, fluttering gently and turning over in the sunlight on their way.
I ran out in my bathrobe and stood beneath the tree. The sound was incredible on a quiet Sunday morning. Without the usual sounds of traffic I could clearly hear the leathery rustle of the leaves as they fell past their fellows and landed gently on the ground. I was surrounded by bright fluttering coins that brushed my head and shoulders as they fell. I ran back in for my camera and attempted to capture the image.
There is no word in English to describe that feeling of mingled joy and sadness at the beauty of fleeting experience. The Japanese have the concept of “mono no aware,” or the sadness of things. It’s very much connected to a Buddhist sense of the brevity of life and the transience of beauty, summed up in the old Japanese phrase “swirling petals, falling leaves.” It’s partly that spirit that encourages the entire nation to turn out for cherry blossom viewing or hanami, during the brief days when the sakura are in flower.
On Sunday morning, the rain of leaves continued, until within an hour the tree was almost completely bare. By afternoon on the same day the formerly brilliant leaves had faded to a dull brown that thickly carpeted our front walk and yard. Now the tree stands with naked branches, waiting for spring.
