The last of the fall color?

It may be the last day of November but we still have a lot of fall color left. Normally the backyard is pretty bare by Thanksgiving but a lot of the big maples still have their yellow leaves. The weather is scheduled to get really cold over the weekend so I'm guessing this is the end of the prettiness for this year.

Azalea Blossom

This solitary blossom emerged on the purple azalea on the southern border. An azalea blossom in November is a real bonus, look at the autumn colour on the leaves surrounding it. Pretty.

Admiring the colors

No, not in the kitchen. I'm having a respite from staring at the paint swatches on the walls and looking at nature instead.



Pretty spectacular, I think.

My Favourite Tree

This is my favourite tree and it's not even in my yard. It's over a couple of roads in the historical Baycrest district of Huntington Bay. The Incorporated Village consists of smaller areas based around five private beach associations like Baycrest and some areas that don't have any affiliation to a beach club, thus increasing the opportunity for more rules and bureaucracy in this part of the Land of the Free. We belong to one beach club, Baycrest starts a hundred or so yards to the north-west of our property, and my neighbours opposite are unaffiliated. Go figure.
Anyway, back to the beauty of nature in the fall. I've been walking the dogs past this tree all week monitoring the changing colour. I think the reason I like it so much is the sculptural quality of the black trunk and branches, balanced with the soft round shape of the foliage and, of course, at this time of the year, the rich red and orange tones of the leaves. Enjoy.

Not quite peak

We seem to be a lot later than usual getting to the real autumn leaves display. This year the season has been the warmest on record and despite the frost last night only some dogwoods and the oaks are changing color. The maple by the bridge is still vibrant green. Normally it would look like this:

.

I'm really interested to see how long we will go until we get to the peak, I don't really believe it's autumn until then. Of course a week later when all the trees are bare I think it's winter.

A change from the usual autumn colours

White hydrangea bouquet in the foyer.



The fall color on the trees is just about at its peak here, so I got these gorgeous white hydrangeas that have just a hint of green in them. That way the cut flowers won't compete with the red, orange and gold in the yard. Pretty.

Submerged rocks

We temporarily interrupt this blog to bring you a picture of waves swirling around a submerged rock.
Peaceful isn't it?

Autumn at the Beach

2 pm, Monday October 22 2007 and it's 73F. We've had an unbelievable run of beautiful weather in NY. It hasn't been this warm through the end of October since we moved here. Someone termed in "perma-summer". That pretty much sums it up. The leaves are changing and falling and they've removed the awning down at the beach because summer is over but you wouldn't know that from the temperature or the number of boats out on the Sound.

Season of mists... and foghorns

On Friday evening the temperatures were in the mid-eighties, even at 10 PM, and the humidity was a killer. That set us up for a big blanket of what passes for fog on the North Shore of Long Island. Where I come from it would be described as a little light mist, where Steven comes from it wouldn't even be worth noting. Everyone else seems to have their air conditioners back on but I am too fiscally prudent mean to run the airco in October. So I opened all the windows as wide as they would go. And then it started.
Sometime in the Friday night/Saturday morning hours the foghorn sounded and it's been going off every five seconds since then, even though the fog lifted at around 9 AM on Saturday. How do I know it's every five seconds? Because I spent the last two nights counting One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi... Steven, of course slept through it. In fact he only noticed it on Saturday morning when he walked the dogs on the beach!
It got so annoying on Friday night that I went to another bedroom to try and get some sleep. The other bedroom is over the garage. At the end of the driveway are two large oak trees. This year has been a bumper one for acorns. They make a delightful ping when they hit the ground, Approximately one a second. So my night went something like this: One ping Missi ping ssi ping ppi ping.

The foghorn, I guess, is on Huntington lighthouse. And either it's part of the Long Island Fall Festival or the thing is stuck. If it's the former it should end sometime after the meatball eating contest today. If it's the latter I suppose it will be sounding every five seconds until someone goes and fixes it.

Season of foghorns and falling acorns
Sleepless nights for me.......

Beach House in Fall (Autumn)

Beach House is featured on Houseblogs.net this week as part of an article on house blogs in autumn. They used the photo from my profile but somehow it looks much bigger and brighter on someone else's webpage. I'm very honoured.
I wonder though, if I'd just used the tag "fall" would I have made the cut?