I picked up some leaves on my morning walk through the woods. One is an oak leaf, its vein a brilliant red amid the curled and mottled green. Two others are a maple turned yellow-orange and a pale-lemon-colored, oval leaf with pointed edges.

The change of leaves from green to gold, crimson and bronze is a miraculous yearly happening. In New Hampshire, where the colorscape is renowned for its beauty and draws tourists from all over the world, “leaf peepers” bring money to our state. To me, though, the value of the leaves is in the looking and smelling and appreciating the wonder of it all.

I recently returned to New Hampshire, my native state, after four decades of living elsewhere. No matter where I lived, I always had moments in September or October where I thought about fall back home. People I’ve met in those elsewhere places, who remembered I was from “up there in New England,” would remark knowingly to me about the beauty of fall in Vermont. Yes, fall is pretty in Vermont, I’d say, but I’m from New Hampshire and our trees are just as good-looking as those next door.

There are times when I stop and take in the magnificence of a scene. The swath of rubies, goldenrods, coppers and mahoganies blending with pointy green firs and stands of white birches against a radiant cerulean sky sometimes looks too surreal to be true, but I know it is. I imprint the panorama, because within a week or so after peak season, a rain storm or big blow will scatter those jewels to the ground where they quickly turn brown.

I walk along paths strewn in places with pine needles as thick as sponges underfoot. I see spring ferns that popped up along the sides of the trail and have now turned lime or rusty brown. The heavy summer rains this year spawned many mushrooms, which add to the wide-ranging flora layering the forest floor. Tranquil ponds along the way mirror the kaleidoscope of color and sky. Boulders, their rough surfaces covered in patches of velvety green moss, stand like sentinels watching the land. There’s a pleasant, decaying, earthy smell in the air. Most glorious of all: the canopy of red, orange and yellow I hike beneath.

I’ve read that leaf-color changes begin as deciduous trees sense the shortening days and longer nights. They stop making carbohydrate to feed themselves, and the chlorophyll breaks down, revealing the yellow and orange pigments that were always present in the leaves, but masked by green during the growing season. Bright light and sugars trapped in the leaves produce other pigments that dominate the fall color in many tree species.

I don’t know the names of all the trees whose leaves I picked up, but a Web site declares there are 70 native trees found growing wild in our state, and a state forestry report estimated four billion trees larger than an inch in diameter statewide. So many types, some rare, it often takes a tree expert to identify some of the trees that live here.

There are as many leaf shapes as tree species. Leaves are defined as simple (leaves with one leaflet per stem), or compound (many leaflets per stem). Leaf shapes are given names such as ovate, lanceolate, heart-shaped, and cordate and names such as entire, lobed, serrate, and crenate, to their margins (edges). Botanists say trees evolved their many leaf shapes to capture adequate sunlight and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, to prevent overheating, and prevent excessive water loss.

An article in the Nashua Telegraph estimated that 608 billion colorful leaves fall in our state each year. Many homeowners grouse about all those falling leaves. They see red when they imagine themselves raking and bagging for weeks.

But what proves irritating to some is a rich food source for Mother Earth. As they decay, fallen leaves release nitrogen and minerals such as potassium, calcium, iron, manganese, iron, sodium and zinc to nourish and renew the forest for another growing season. Decaying leaves provide fodder for the lady slippers, wild calla, goldenrod, bittersweet and other woodland plants I see along trail edges early in the year. Smart homeowners mow, mulch and/or compost the leaves to use in flower beds and vegetable gardens.

Like a well-tended garden, my soul is enriched by autumn’s glory. I am reminded fall doesn’t spell the waning of another year, but signals the magic renewal of life itself.

By Pauline Pinard Bogaert, Master Gardener