Purple October, Green Halloween (?)

A wild growing patch of American Beauty Berries

They like the sunlight

Green is all I’ve got in the way of leaves, so here ’tis! It’s now looking more weathered and antique than you see in the pictures, but the autumn colors are in no particular hurry in Alabama. I can’t really say “It’s fall, y’all!” Not yet. The Beauty Berries began fruiting in September, after blooming in the summer. To see what the flower froth looks like, click here and scroll way down the page: https://catwoodsporchparty.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/wild-summer-creeks-and-creatures/

A bumper crop!

Although I usually prefer my purples a tad bluer, I’ll take this! I love all things purple, purple passion, purple prose, iris, and violets. I have the skewed color sense (or mental aberration, LOL) attributed to the Impressionists by art critics, violettomania. The sharpest color change out there so far: redviolets, autumn’s version of spring violets.

A refreshing degree of disorder

The Beauty Berry bush can be trimmed and pruned as a cultivar, but I prefer my enormous, tangled thicket and its spawn of startling purple berries bursting from spots far from the patch. In so many places we’re seeing them now, they weren’t there last year! Wee woo hoo! Wildly random growth creeping towards us. Scary berries for October. I’m happy!

Critter cover

This photo hints of shaded spaces beyond the mass of leaves and fruit. I imagine paths within twisting and twining, like a labyrinth. What happens there? Who walks and flits and buzzes? Some uncharted critter we have no name for? I can see that birds and insects eat some of the berries, I can hear surrounding crickets.  I’d like to somehow enter the underbrush, and explore the life behind the vines and berry clumps. No doubt I’d find redbugs galore and a few leftover ticks.

Yellow leaves are coming our way

To my knowledge there is no term for the peculiar fixation I have on the color green. I’m going to call it verte-igo. Then I can sing “That old green magic has me in it’s spell . . . in a spin, lovin’ the spin I’m in . . . ” (1)  We’ve had green Halloweens, since we never know just what point in the color continuum the foliage will be at, on October’s last day. This preternatural cold spell we’re having – brrrr –  will help stop chlorophyll production. I’ll jump on the yellow, red, and orange fall bandwagon, whenever. There will be more photos, another post. After that color feast, I’ll pine for green all winter long.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The American Beautyberry is for visual enjoyment only. There is conflicting online information about possible toxicity of Beautyberries, which is enough for me to say, DO NOT EAT them. This is my opinion. I  recommend NOT consuming any wild growing plants.

References:

(1) “That Old Black Magic”, music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, first recorded and released by Glenn Miller, 1942.

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