The weather gurus tell us that we had too much rain at the wrong time, or not enough rain at the right time, resulting in a fall color season characterized by hillsides shifting straight from green to brown with just a few splashes of yellow or red in between. If fall color will be rare this year, I thought I'd better find some before it all fades away.
Just outside the house I saw orange in the air everywhere--Asian ladybeetles flittering around looking for warm places to winter. They're preferable to what we smelled in the air this morning: burnt plastics from a factory fire more than 20 miles away. Fortunately, by noon a shift in the weather had pushed the stink away.
The upper meadow smells of rotting leaves and bristles with many shades of brown, from milkweed pods bursting and dried teasels rustling in the breeze. A few spots of color--orange oak leaf, purple brambles, bright red berries, and a lone violet blossom, rare in October. Down in the garden orange flashes warn of heat--ghost peppers and habaneros still ripening beneath the green leaves. The woods offer up a few yellow and orange trees, and two tiny pinkish leaves nestle among the verdant green on a rotting log.
The show is not particularly spectacular and would be easy to overlook, but they're better than nothing. Better enjoy them while we can!
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