Every autumn moves at its own pace; every autumn has its own mix and shades of colours. Within a few miles on the east coast, you can find beech trees gone golden and golden brown by the roadside (especially as you come off the dual carriageway from Dublin going on to Dunshaughlin and points North), while in the city, you have left behind a large beech which, having shed a few brown leaves, still stands green. A small beech, set in a circle of some 10 paces' diameter, ranges from deep claret to yellowish to full green. Ash, given calm weather, often ends in dignity in lemon yellow. This year's rain and wind leave the ground around them deep in slushy greenery. Maples come into their own; Dublin streets glow from them. Other maples, not 50 miles away, are greenish still. The soil, the weather, the stock all the trees come from give us this diversity.
Pedunculate oaks in this part of Meath are still glossy green in their leaves, with hardly any taint of decay, while in among them a few American red oaks have gone from bright golden almost to scarlet. For the most striking range of colour, never mind your Amelanchier or your much-boosted liquidambar (which, says our horticulturist, will still show purple in January), but turn to the dogwood or cornus. There may be cornus and cornus, but one beats all the others in its range.
This year it was perhaps too heavily pruned, for it came on very late and too, too big. Nine or 10 feet high, and it has almost closed over the driveway to the house. But it hasn't lost its ability to run through an amazing range of colours in its leaves - the size of a big man's hand. From green into every shade of yellow, then to red and into purples, nearly all a mix of the three with splashes of deep purple. You pick the leaves, put them between the pages of a book. They last, but fade. Has anyone a varnish or preservative that would hold the full colour? A friend says she has seen lampshades decorated with preserved leaves. Is this possible? There is a shine still on the big leaves of the white mulberry. A massive season for haws. Coprinus comatus or Lawyer's Wig flourishing at the cattle-dip on the roadside. All that is for this townland, mainly, and you don't have to be reminded that there are over 60,000 of them and every single unit may have its own story. Y