NOT EVERY LEAF FALLS
Of course nature isn’t dying; it’s merely renewing itself. And for most people that transformation means depression. For us, leaves are the harbinger of melancholy autumn, the leaves that before long will yellow and fall, tossed hither and yon by the wind, at times plummeting us into sadness, at times uplifting us to transports of romantic ecstasy. The yellowing leaves whose rustle breaks the silence, accompanying our steps as we trudge on alone. The trees’ multi-colored tears, shed without exception every fall.

Take a look around you at the leaves on the ground, at the ones about to fall from the trees. Heart-shaped, egg-shaped, star-shaped, ellipsoid. Yellow, red, brown. What they have in common is that they all fall. For they all belong to the family of gymnosperms or ‘naked seeds’. Beech, hornbeam, sycamore, alder, oak, walnut—these are the gymnosperms that grow in Turkey.