Sunday, October 23, 2011

What happened to the colors?

Well, somehow we seem to have rocketed straight from January (see my last post) to October. Sheesh!

Every year at this time I find myself wandering around with my camera in a bit of a daze. There are so many photogenic scenes around here in the fall.

This afternoon I was browsing through some of my favorite blogs, clicking on links now and again. I came across a new one, The Fall Color Project, that gives links to blog posts with photos from all around the country. So I took my camera and went wandering around the yard trying to find some color to photograph so I could join the project. I found very little - and, sadly, the brightest of what I did find was from invasive species like Evonymus and Oriental Bittersweet that are flourishing despite my best attempts to control them.

This fall has undoubtedly been a bit odd. A month ago the green leaves on some trees (including my biggest sugar maple) just started withering up and dropping...

Two weeks ago today the trees that still had leaves were green. The next day colors had appeared here and there - in this photo you can see just a bit in the trees across the lake over in Kingston....

This single branch on the big driveway oak has turned red, though the rest of the tree is still quite green...

Across the driveway is a completely overgrown crabapple that is just beginning to show a few hints of color, mostly in the fruit...

I found this little splash behind the carriage house - pretty colors but that purply-red comes from the dreaded Burning Bush...

Wandered down to the field but found very little there. You can see the white trunks of the popples (the local name for poplars, known also in other parts as aspens), which have already lost their leaves. The rest are showing just a few hints of color...

There was one straggly bit of staghorn sumac growing where it shouldn't be, nestled between the smoky green of the Butterfly Bush and the still-bright leaves of the lilacs. Another sugar maple, one that's usually quite majestic, is looking pretty thin this year...

I have heard it speculated that the maples are showing delayed damage from our late August visitor, Hurricane Irene. We didn't get the winds or torrential rains that lashed Vermont, and thought we'd seen it go by with little effect. We're only about ten miles from the ocean, though, and some are saying now that the rain we did get was saturated with salt and that's what's caused our troubles. I lost one of my sugar maples three years ago to some unidentified and fast-acting lethal agent. I sure hope that this time salt is really all it is!

1 comment:

Dave@TheHomeGarden said...

It's amazing how much the weather effects the fall color. I'm fortunately to not have to worry about salt in the soil or hurricanes, being inland. I sure hope your maples make it through, sugar maples are one of the most gorgeous trees this time of year. Thanks for joining in the Fall Color Project!