More Fall Color

Fall, or autumn if you prefer, continues to impress and amaze even those of us who have witnessed it for decades. Even drought muted colors can stop people in their tracks, and that’s exactly what happened to me when I saw the late afternoon sun just kissing the tops of these birch trees. For a few moments there was fire burning in the tree tops and it was beautiful.

I’ve paid closer attention to how trees change color this year and I’ve noticed that some start to change one afternoon and literally overnight they can double the color they had the previous day, and in this way they can go from green to red or orange in just a couple of days. That explains why I missed most of the color on this section of river this year; it all happened so fast. I’ve also noticed that you can find peak color on one side of town and virtually none on the other side, and you can be fooled.

This sugar maple is in a spot where I can watch it each day and I saw it completely change into its fall color in about two days.

Oaks are just starting to change. They and beeches are the last to change in this area.

The bright lemon yellow at the Branch River in Marlborough comes from invasive Oriental bittersweet’s fall color.

The trouble with Oriental Bittersweet vines is they’re strong as wire cable, so when they climb and wrap themselves around a tree they strangle and kill it. As the tree grows the bittersweet doesn’t give, and the tree dies.

I didn’t see any bittersweet at the Ashuelot River north of Keene but I did see plenty of color, including yellow.

We have 22 miles of trails where I work and this is the start of one of them. It’s a wonderful time of year to live and work in the woods.

The trees along the shoreline of this hill at Half Moon Pond in Hancock are wearing their natural fall colors, but the trees at the top of the hill were colored by the sun. Sun colored trees are often all the same color as these were. This was taken just as the sun was coming over the hill behind me in early morning and the sun often does this to this hill at that time of day.

I looked through a very red, red maple. Red maples don’t always turn red in the fall. They can also be orange or yellow. Sometimes they change color from what they wore the previous year, and I’ve seen lots of trees doing that this year.

Maple leaved viburnums (Viburnum acerifolium) are putting on a beautiful show this year. This native shrub has an amazing range of colors in the fall and I’m surprised more people don’t grow it in their gardens. It also has berries that birds love.

Here is another maple leaved viburnum looking completely different in color. Their leaves seem to start out colored just about any color you can name in the fall, but after their red / yellow / orange/ purple phases all of the leaves eventually become a very pale, ghostly pink, making this shrub’s fall color among the most beautiful in the forest, in my opinion.

This year the theme seems to be that I’m in the right place at the wrong time. Every time I’ve gone to How Reservoir in Dublin to see the beautiful colors there it has been cloudy or even drizzling. I’ve often thought that fall colors have more “pop” on cloudy days, but I’ll leave you to your own opinions about it.

That’s Mount Monadnock in the background.

Sometimes a single tree will beg all of your attention, as this one did on this day.

The mist was thick on this day but the colors were amazing.

Here are some trees in full sun. What do you think? Does shade or sunshine better show the colors. To me, possibly because I’m colorblind, these colors look washed out to me. They’re still pretty but to my eyes they don’t have the vibrancy of those in the shade.

Since all roads look alike as far as foliage goes at this time of year I’m not surprised that I’ve completely forgotten where this one is. It doesn’t matter; if you come here just drive on any road and you’ll see the same.

Highbush blueberries are showing some beautiful colors this year.

This hillside often has cows in front of it, and it is so locally famous for fall color that I’ve seen it in two different newspapers so far this season. By the time I got there many of the trees had already lost their leaves.

This maple had a lot of wow factor. It was huge; white pine trees are our tallest tree but this maple was keeping up with the pine tree right next to it.

I’ve chosen this photo as my favorite of this lot, not just because of the colors but also the wildness. It’s a place of quiet serenity where the silence is often broken only by the call of a loon or a flock of geese. On this morning a loon called. When you hear that eerie sound for the first time you might feel that you hadn’t really lived full measure until that moment, but no matter how many times you’ve heard it before everything will come to a complete stop when you hear it again.

Sometimes moments in life are so perfect you want to freeze frame them; capture them within your soul forever so they never fade away—they burn themselves into your being until they’re a part of who you are. ~Cassandra Giovanni

Thanks for coming by.