Festival of Leaves 2018 ~
Week # 4: The Orange on the Side of the Road

It is the middle of October and it should be the peak of the peak of the color change. Usually, Columbus Day marks the peak of the autumnal glow in New England, but summer lasted longer than usual … like a month longer than usual … and there has been an awful lot of rain.

Along the Blackstone in Rhode Island

In fact, it has been raining heavily every morning for a couple of weeks. It usually dries out by evening, but we only get a couple of hours of sunshine and until last night, we have not had a frost.

Now, of course, it’s getting cold very quickly. It was 88 degrees (Fahrenheit which translates to 31.1 Celsius) a few days ago and last night it went down into the 30s … which is a pretty big drop. During the last heavy rains, a lot of trees lost their leaves. Green leaves, falling like autumn leaves. I looked out through the leaves and I realized that even if the leaves finally began to change, there wouldn’t be enough of them left on the trees to make much of a show.

Home

Today, when the rain stopped around noon, we went out and took a few more pictures. Because our autumn is ending before it really began.

Orange maple by the Mumford Dam

Still, it’s pretty. Not glorious. Not heartbreaking with the beauty of the colors … but it’s pretty. And to be fair, we don’t have a glorious autumn every year. It all depends on the weather. If we get a cold snap at the right time and we don’t get huge amounts of rain and wind, our world glows.

Leaves on the lawn

On a year like this? Imperfect, but pretty. And along the rivers, at least the yellows are gorgeous.

Categories: #foliage, #Photography, Autumn, Blackstone Valley, leafing

Tags: #Photography, autumn, leafing, Marilyn Armstrong, orange