Coming Up: Autumn Colours Week

Poppytalk is hosting another seasonal colours week, this time for autumn colours. (I feel kind of bad that our Southern Hemisphere friends are left out; is anyone down there hosting a spring colours week anytime soon?) Here's the information from the site:

Please join us by uploading your beautiful fall colours to our Autumn Colours Week flickr pool.  I will post and favourtie heaps each day here on the blog in the process and the more the merrier if you care to do the same!  Here is the colour schedule:

Monday, October 17th - Red
Tuesday, October 18th - Yellow
Wednesday, October 19th - Orange
Thursday, October 20th - Grey
Friday, October 21st - Brown

Be sure to upload the next day's colour after 6pm Pacific only (and please no product or images you've uploaded to previous colour weeks). Come join! It'll be fun!

Around here, the experts tell us to expect less fall foliage colors than usual, because of Tropical Storm Irene at the end of August. Besides ripping down loads of leaves (and, um, trees), she sprayed a bunch of salt around, too. But just because the color isn't all over the place at the moment doesn't mean it's not there. There are flashes of orangey red that make me gasp, they're just so perfect. And the oak tree at the end of our driveway has deep, red leaves mixed in with the dried-up brown ones. We are maybe looking a little harder for the color right now (and who knows what it will look like later on? it's early yet), but it's there. I have to remind myself to watch the road when I'm driving instead of the trees!

Thursday I was just cranky, no other word for it, so after lunch I put my daughter in the stroller, grabbed my camera, and off we went, a right, a left, then a right down a less-traveled road (because cars go so fast in our neighborhood; it's good to duck down a quieter road). All the way to the end we went, rewarded with a pond on one side and a horse and two alpaca on the other. Along the way we stopped to take photos and collect leaves--and race the stroller, fast, through some puddles left over from the morning's rain--such fun for the girl! Over an hour later we were back, only slightly less cranky, alas, but with lots of photos, and leaves to press, too.

I plan to post some photos here, too, like I did with summer colours week, but since the list above doesn't include pink or green, I'll leave you with this photo of pokeweed getting all flashy for autumn.

I admit, I had to be dragged out of summer kicking and screaming. I'm still a little put out by the fact it's over, but I'll enjoy the final glorious shot of color we get before winter arrives...