Why Leaves Change Colors and Other Musings

Leaves changing color is one of the best parts about fall. Nashville is a great town to watch the leaves turn vibrant shades of red, yellow, orange and brown, and eventually fall from their branches. With the help of chlorophyll (or lack of help, we should say), the leaves drastically change — and this year more than ever.

And thanks to many literary legends, we can enjoy the change of seasons in word form as well as looking outside our window. Inspired by fall, Robert Frost’s “Gathering Leaves” gets you right in the spirit of fall (if Vanderbilt football and pumpkin pies don’t work for you).

Read the poem below for some fall fun:

“Gathering Leaves” by Robert Frost

Spades take up leaves

No better than spoons,

And bags full of leaves

Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise

Of rustling all day

Like rabbit and deer

Running away.

But the mountains I raise

Elude my embrace,

Flowing over my arms

And into my face.

I may load and unload

Again and again

Till I fill the whole shed,

And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,

And since they grew duller

From contact with earth,

Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.

But a crop is a crop,

And who’s to say where

The harvest shall stop

The team at the Parke Company loves when the leaves change colors. (And so does Robert Frost!) What other poems, quotes or literary works gets you in the spirit for autumn?