A story in pictures! Thank you, commentor Delphinium:
While it has been a mostly mild and sunny fall here so far in Central NY, by now most of the colors have faded and the leaves swept up into neat piles. Wanted to share a few last bits of red, yellow, and orange around my neighborhood as it transitions into the next season.
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Jeffg166
I have seedlings in pots and some perennial plants started in pots that will get sunk into the ground today. We might have a freeze tonight. With any thaw the seedlings can be moved into the ground in the flower beds through the winter.
Will turn one of the outside faucets off and cover it.
JPL
It’s freezing this morning and the only upside to that is little Finch didn’t want to stay outside long.
The photos are lovely.
raven
Nice! We did our annual mountain drive right after my Keys trip and the colors were mixed. One side of a mountain would be completely grey and the other would be bursting with red and gold!
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
satby
Beautiful photos Delphinium! I always appreciate when someone can notice and capture the beauty in what most people pass by.
I still had blooming begonias and coneflowers yesterday, and none of the foliage had died off on the summer tubers I had to lift. We had snow and rain yesterday and a freeze overnight, so I figured I would be pulling them today in the cold. But I woke up to over four inches of snow and it’s still coming down!
satby
@rikyrah: good morning! 🙋
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Amir Khalid
I remember riding in a bus upstate from New York City to Ithaca for some IBM thing or other. The view from my window of the autumn foliage in the forests lining the route was glorious.
JPL
@satby: yikes!
Snow is not in the forecast, but we will have a few chilly days next week.
Nancy
I appreciate your photos because the images are lovely and the idea of capturing change and holding it in place resonates. You found beauty in the process of fall. It’s so easy to see ending and decay. I love how you celebrated endings and beginnings..
Don
Beautiful pictures. Good eye.
It’s 35 degrees this morning in Central Texas. That’s COLD for us’ns.
Lapassionara
Thanks for the lovely photos. I planted a red maple in our backyard about five years ago, and I had lovely color this year for the first time.
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx Delphinium, the beautiful pics are a great way to start the day.
It snowed Friday night (an unexpected dusting) supposed to snow again tomorrow night. Winter is here, I am hopeful it will be a real winter. The woodstove has been burning all night and probably will all day too, what with the wife being home. I usually put up 2 cords for the winter and by March I am anxiously eyeing the fast dwindling pile. This year I put up 3 cords just so I don’t have to worry about a late season cold snap.
If time allows I will be in the garden taking down trellises and such today. Deer season opened this wkend. Time for my annual visit to my buddy’s deer camp on the other side of the conservation area.
kalakal
Lovely photos. Fall is meh in Pinellas Fl, a bit colder and very dry, no beautiful leaf colours. Been clearing up after Nicole, no real damage, just a lot of debris. A young Queen Palm will have to go, it’s at a 45 degree angle
delphinium
Good morning everyone! I’ve always loved the patterns and textures in nature (and have far more pictures of trees, etc that I will ever know what to do with) and as this area moves into winter, look forward to the more stark landscape that really emphasizes the ‘bare bones’ of the natural world.
delphinium
@Amir Khalid: Yes, it really is such a beautiful area. Definitely makes up for our rather harsh winters here. : )
delphinium
@satby: Thanks! I still have some spiderwort, gaura, and hydrangeas blooming but am guessing with the cold moving in this week that those will fade soon.
Also, was late to the thread where you mentioned your sister had passed away. So sorry for your loss-may your time spent together bring you some comfort at this time.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Gorgeous photos. The Fall is something I missed so much living in the topical and semi tropical places of my youth, the colors , the crisp snap of the air, just lovely.
delphinium
@raven:
Glad you got to see some fall colors. Hope it was a great trip and you caught lots of fish!
delphinium
@Lapassionara:
Nice! Maples are such beautiful trees.
satby
@delphinium: Thank you!
satby
@delphinium: Thank you.
MomSense
These photos are beautiful.
It was 65 here in Maine on Friday and Saturday. We went swimming in the lake. Unheard of.
Then a storm passed through with strong wind and rain and now it’s 37. We’re expecting snow later this week.
Kristine
Thank you for the lovely photos!
Last Thursday was fantastic—sunny and highs near 70. Handymen decided that would be a good idea to install new back door, and they weren’t wrong. Temps dropped overnight. Now NE Illinois is unseasonably cold, like most of the rest of the country. Could get an inch or so of snow Monday/Tuesday, and the cold won’t be leaving anytime soon. I have some container plants wedged in a warmer spot near the house, but they’ll need to come in this week.
artem1s
I’m roadtripping to the Keys starting today. Hoping to see some color as I go thru the mountains. Woke up to a dusting of snow this morning. First of the winter. So leaving just in time.
JMG
75 here in suburban Boston yesterday. 50 and raining today. Not going to get above 45 the rest of the week, with snow then rain Wednesday (no accumulation forecast). Alas, the leaves are off all the trees in my location — except one. There is a tallish slender maple that lives on the side of my yard partially covered by taller trees. Every year it stays green far past when the other maples have their leaves turn and fall, even past when the oaks turn. Today it’s mostly yellow, half the leaves have fallen, but it still has some pale green ones. Every fall I measure the season by that tree.It’s an annual source of wonder for me.
Gin & Tonic
It was a glorious day in southern New England yesterday – bright sun and 72 degrees. Having done yard work the previous couple of days, my dear wife and I put the top down and drove to the beach. I regretted not packing swim trunks, as I was sorely tempted to go in – there was plenty of wave action, perhaps a remnant of Nicole.
Anyway, dug up a bunch of dahlia tubers. How is best to over-winter them so they neither rot nor dry out?
Tdjr
It has been a beautiful fall here in western PA. The colors were gorgeous and lots of sunny warm days. Nicole brought us a change and this morning I saw the first tiny flurries. But it’s hard to complain after the glorious fall we’ve had.
Elizabelle
This was the prettiest fall I have ever remembered, in central Virginia. Summer temperatures yesterday; a front through last evening.
Is a jackal missing? Has germy shoemangler been around recently?
satby
@Gin & Tonic: I just put mine in cardboard boxes in a cold but not freezing room in the basement. Make sure there’s no damp soil still on them. Some people pack them in peat moss, but I never bothered. Most of them were fine. I did the calla lilly tubers the same way, the begonias just went into the same room in their pots once dormant, I allowed the soil to dry out. Other people probably have better suggestions, because I’ve only grown plants needed to be lifted for a few years.
Anyway
Worked all day in the yard yesterday — cleaned out my tomato plants, raked (elbow grease) the front yard, pulled out the basil plants… fall clean-up day.
delphinium
@Nancy:
Thank you for the kind words!
WaterGirl
@Kristine: Yeah, we had our lat warm day on Thursday and then it got down to 25 here last night. Even my pansies are seriously pissed off, hoping they can recover.
sab
Is that top leaf a delphinium leaf?
I just let the dog out and a deer had pooped on our back steps, right next to the sliding door!
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: I bought some of these mesh bags on Amazon. They’re for toys and game pieces but with 3 sizes in the set, there’s always a size that works for small tubers and large ones.
Plus, you can label them that way too!
eclare
@satby: Oh gosh, I did not see that either about your sister. I am so sorry.
oldgold
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” Camus
oldgold
@raven: Everywhere I go and everything I see, seems to reflect this duality.
Kristine
@WaterGirl: Judging from the condition of the impatiens (not to mention the frozen water in the birdbaths) I should’ve brought my containers in last night. Hoping the gerbera are okay. This past spring, I split an overgrown plant that I’d had for three years into three pieces–they all took and put forth such lovely flowers. I hope one night’s temp dip wasn’t enough to do them in.
WaterGirl
@Kristine: Oh, that would be heartbreaking. That’s not just a frost, or a hard frost, that’s a freeze. Fingers crossed for you.
Pansies can handle the cold, but they really didn’t have much warning, no easing into it. 75 on Thursday, 25 on Saturday night.
delphinium
@sab:
The first photo is of a Japanese maple leaf.
sab
@delphinium: Thanks.
scav
Still cleaning up from the wind storm and power loss, but at least it’s now in other peoples’ yards. Got to be cherished goddess queen of all the cows when I topped the brassica cover crop and brought them the bounty. They were practically crawling over the (double-wire!) electric fence to eat directly out of my trugs.
Pete Mack
The leaves held on ridiculously long, yes. The apple tree next door is finally turning, and my high bush cranberries have just a tinge of red. And I had tomatoes till mid october. Alas, it all changes tonight, with 10 days of genuinely cold weather, pulled south by the remnants of Nicole.
Schenectady is supposed to be 5a/4b.
J R in WV
We haven’t planted many actual trees, being in the middle of wooded hllsides of West Virginia, but we did plant one Japanese maple tree out front. it was a gift from a friend who stayed with us for a few weeks while recovering from his prostate cancer surgery, and had done work as an arborist on his small farm a little farther north of CRW than we are south.
It is still covered with brilliant red leaves while every other tree on the mountainside we live in is barren of all foliage. This year even the oak trees are bare, many of which hold to brown leaves until new foliage pushes them off some spring. We will always think of Cary every time we pass that beautiful tree!
Pretty cold last night, but the pond plants are still green and floating proudly, not yet a hard freeze at least on the surface of the tiny frog pond, tho all the amphibians who live in and around the tiny pond are long gone into their winter hibernation.