Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Keep your eyes open...


Hi folks-

As always- I'm sorry I've not been writing more often; and will try to do better.   : - )

Mostly it's the crazy weather; which makes for crazy work schedules, all out of whack.  And the confusion levels; which are globally in the upper stratosphere, on any topic.  And harvest.  Etc.

But- I wanted to remind older readers about the autumn phenomenon I first wrote about in 2007; and point out- this may be the year for you to see it.  Locally; I think our trees and leaves are poised for something like this to happen - and in the next few days.  The leaves this year are keeping me enthralled; we've got more red in our sugar maples than I've ever seen, in 30+ years; and- all the experts missed predicting all this color, which tickles me. (I'm way more expert than those guys- I learned to not even try predicting, years ago.)   : - )

The original post is here; give it a read- then, get your morning coffee ready, and keep your eyes open.  And- let me know what you see.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank your for that beautiful word-painting (your original 2007 post)!

I wish I could see that incredible spectacle at least once, but my corner of the world virtually never gets cold enough for frost.

As for global weirding, I see signs of it everywhere lately. For example, the jackaranda trees here in southern California used to reliably flower twice a year, in spring and fall. One year recently they flowered *five* times, as successive heat waves came and went repeatedly for several months. Each flowering was noticeably weaker than the last.

I wonder what effect this had on the insects that normally feed on the nectar from the blooms, the baby birds that normally feed on the insects, and so on, with disruptive ripples of unknown magnitude propagating unpredictably through the ecosystem.

Like your previously unreported last dance of the autumn leaves, I have seen no other reports of the dramatically disrupted flowering schedule of the jackarandas. Surely somebody else noticed?

-Gnobuddy

Anonymous said...

Here in northwest Missouri, the Hedge or Osage Orange trees do the raining of leaves. They are golden yellow when it happens, and quite spectacular. Otherwise, we have mostly oaks and sycamores, both of which cling to a lot of their leaves for most of the winter. the walnuts have usually lost their leaves even before the first frost.