COOL Kid's Club ventured out to Pageant Park today.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.~~Albert Camus

Another warm, sunny Indian-summer morning, instead of meeting at our garage, COOL Kid's Club ventured out to Pageant Park (between Drake and Harmon Parks.) It was just the right size of kids (not the typical 20 to 30 kids) for me to manage. There were Bennett, Chloe, Katherine, Peter, Sam, Ryan, and our three kids. Passerbys thought we were celebrating a birthday.

Harmon Park is a few steps away, right next to Pageant Park. The kids ran joyfully around open field and played "tag." Afterwards, they raked up fallen leaves and one-by-one piled them over the kids. They heard and felt leaves crunch under their feets and took in the beauty of fall colors with their bodies, from head to toes. Pageant Park, the smallest park in town, was a good place to take in the sights of the season. I just wish I remembered to put the memory card back in my digital camera!!!! There were many picture-perfect moments/opportunities I could've captured...sadly...no photos to share with you today.

Bend is taking on an amazing transformation right now. Whether we're hiking along a trail, driving through Oregon's back roads or cruising along its major highways, leaves of big leaf maple, dogwood, red alder, vine maple--all catch our eye with their brilliant colors and hues~~red, yellow, and sometimes pink vine maple, yellow western larch, willow, aspen, cottonwood, Bronze oaks, and a lot more-–including the omnipresent evergreens.

This is time of year often generates questions especially from kids "Why do leaves change color, anyway?" Here is one of the answers we found in our search: "The leaves of deciduous trees change color each fall due to a combination of environmental factors. During the summer months, a leaf is green because of the tree is making chlorophyll through the process of photosynthesis. As day length wanes in the fall and temperatures cool, photosynthesis begins to shut down, revealing "the natural color pigments of the leaves"--what we know as fall colors. Cool nights combined with dry, bright sunny days make for the best colors.