Yay Fall!
The main drawback to working in a beautiful park is that the crazy busy times just so happen to coincide with the most beautiful times of the year - it's hard to find time to get out and enjoy. I did manage to squeeze in a quick hike yesterday, and got a few pictures of the TREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! OMG. Even though I've lived here all my life, every year I still wander around with my eyes all like this: O_O and my face all like this :D. The pictures are always such a disappointment though - they never even begin to capture the wow, but I'll put 'em up anyway.
A lot of the fall color comes from the sugar maple trees - they can turn brilliant yellow gold to orange to deep glowing red, sometimes all in the same tree. On the edges of the forest they tend to go red on the outside and gold on the inner leaves, while the trees in the interior of the forest tend to go for the pure yellow. Sometimes the roads that go through the forest turn into tunnels of gold and the leaves fall so densely it's hard to tell where the road is, and you have to be careful not to accidentally drive off into the woods!
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There's still a lot of green in the trees - the oaks will be the last to turn. Some of them turn brown - not plain brown though - I love all the different shades of the browns just as much as all of the colors - glowy golden brown, deep dark brown, mottled brown, red brown, pale tan, and everything inbetween. Some of the oaks will go a fairly brilliant red or purple red - the last blast of color before you have to retune your eyeballs to appreciate the subtle grays and browns of the winter forest.
Sun shining through dogwood leaves. These are pale pink-and-green, but some of the dogwoods go absolutely crazy deep red. If I was making a painting I would hesitate to put such paint down on the canvas, because surely such color cannot be natural! I'd probably chicken out and mix in some complementary color to tone it down.
Sun through some yellow sugar maple leaves, that are just barely edging in to red. There's a hillside I drive by every morning, and the rising sun angles up and hits all the yellow sugar maple leaves, and you can imagine that the whole forest is on fire, lit up from within.
The individual leaves all have their unique patterns - I'm fond of the funny blotchy ones myself. This is a sugar maple leaf with the green chlorophyll still breaking down, giving it a fine grain speckle that I thought was pretty nifty.
Another maple, green center, red edging.
Close up - oooh. Glowy. O_O And lookee at all the little veinlets, hee!
The fall seed crop has its own beauty as well - this is a bit of white snakeroot fluffage. I need to go gather my milkweed and prairie seeds for next year's baby plant crop.
Wee little Blanchard's cricket frog I found amongst the leafage. He very obligingly held perfectly still so I could get a close up.
My other project over the weekend, since temperatures dipped into the freezing range: new winter dens for the outside opossums. Three cozy plastic tubs lined with styrofoam for insulation. I also added straw and an emergency space blanket - those foil body-heat reflecting ones. Two of the kids moved right in and seemed delighted with their new digs - I've got one hold out, though, who prefers her stinky blanket in a flower pot.
I did get the kitchen cleaned up after my project, but don't look too close in the living room >_>