Nothing stays the same one day to the next. They may be similar, but never exactly the same. It shows a lot with changing colors.
Winter
Hills are gray all winter. Bare branches are gray. The sky is often gray.
On clear days the sky is a deep blue. The pastures are a rusty tan. Occasional pines are dark green with the red cedars a gray green. Mosses and lichens glow green on the trees and ground.
One day the air seems lighter, warmer. The sun rises higher and stays a little longer each day. Then the changing colors start.
Spring
At first the green is only on the forest floor and in the pastures. Then the spring ephemerals start emerging. Blues, pinks, whites erupt under the still bare gray trees.
From my barn door I watch the hillside beyond the pastures. One day it is still gray. The next there is a delicate hint of green.
As the spring ephemerals finish blooming and set seed, the hillsides turn spring green with new leaves. Other plants grow up hiding the fading ephemerals and add color to the forest floor.
Summer
Changing colors in the sky reflect the change in the seasons. The sky is now a lighter shade of blue. The clouds have white tops and puffy shapes.
On the hillsides the green has deepened to a mature green. Even there the greens vary from one kind of tree to another ranging from Kelly green to dark green.
Flowers are changing colors too. They now tend more to the white and yellow flowers on taller plants.
Fall
It is fall now in the Ozarks. The hillside I watch is turning orange slowly as frost is late this year. Flowers are again mostly the blues, but darker than in the spring.
Many people love the changing colors of fall. They are pretty, but I know they are fleeting. Soon the hillside will again be gray under gray skies leaving me counting the days to spring.
See how colors change through the Ozark year in “Exploring the Ozark Hills“
