A drift of dark eyed golden Rudbeckia smile back at me from over the pond, cheerfully radiating sunshine even as the clouds roll in, the wind gets up and a cool damp draft blows down my neck.
Autumn is beginning to show its true colours and as the weather turns so do the leaves. Falling levels of light and cooling temperatures trigger changes in all of us. While we pile on layers of warmer clothes, deciduous plants are getting ready to shed their layers of leaves. Feeding, which leaves do for their plants through spring and summer, is forgotten for now, surviving winter takes priority.
Chlorophyll breaks down and its loss reveals the reds and yellows of anthocyanins and carotinoides, the temporary blaze of colour we love to see in autumn. By the end of the season and leaf fall, all that energy provided by sunlight has been stored by plants in their fruit, roots, bulbs, corms and tubers for the next generation or to see them through the winter.
When we plant bulbs for next spring flowers we are burying the sun’s energy under the soil and as we pick and eat fruit, nuts and seeds, we are harvesting sunshine just as the birds and small mammals do. Each autumn a squirrel makes holes around my garden and hides the hazel nuts he beats me to picking every year.
While I might rarely get to taste the nuts from my garden’s hazel trees, I will enjoy the sun’s energy stored in the blackberries from the hedge and windfall apples. The least blemished I’ll munch on soon, crisp and fresh. Others will be cooked and frozen for a burst of light on dark winter days.
Some people go abroad on holiday for their dose of winter sun but I take mine at home, harvested as berries, fruit and green winter vegetables. Grown specially or foraged, picked as fresh as it’s possible to get, straight from my garden and full of stored sunshine.
