Fall Colors I: Trees

Fall officially started a month ago, but trees in our neighborhood are just now showing color, and leaves (except for the cottonwood, which started shedding in August) are just now beginning to fall. Today it is almost 80 degrees, with showers forecast for later, and a breezy south wind that is ringing the wind chime on the front porch. The doors are open, and we haven't thought about replacing the screens with the storm windows yet. It seems like summer wants to linger longer, and we can't really object. One of the first colorful trees we can see from the house is our backyard neighbor Mark's sassafras tree. Behind our garage, it looms up with fiery glowing branches.

Across the street, our neighbor Karen has two hard maples in front of her house. This one is blazing gold right now while the one next to it is still green. We look out the front door and see this glowing golden mass of leaves that shines even on a partly cloudy day, like today.
This week has been a sickly one, with one of the season's famous "two weeks no matter what you take for it" colds that included fever for a while, and now a racking cough that sneaks up on me. So although it is a lovely day for a drive, my leaf peeking so far has been at home. If I had more ambition I would start cleaning up the house plants on the porch, since surely they will have to come inside some time. Yet our highs will be in the 80s through Monday and even at the end of next week, on Halloween, the low will be only in the 50s. So, not yet.

A couple of years ago I posted a new photo almost every day for a month as our backyard sugar maple turned colors. I won't do that this year, but will note that on this date, there is just a tad of orange showing on the tips of the outer branches, and most of the interior is still green. One exception is a group of branches high up, as in 30 to 40 feet, that are becoming yellow. This tree needs trimming and thinning every 5 years or so, and this is its year. Yesterday the company we have contracted with called to say they would be out next Tuesday. We said, not yet. It's better to trim it after the leaves have fallen, and Sugar Maple isn't going to let go of all of its ton or so of little oxygen factories for a couple of weeks, I'm betting.

Next up: Fall Color II: Mums both new and volunteer