As I contemplated Friday afternoon what I was going to write about for the blog this weekend, I felt like I wanted to talk about fall, even as the temperatures were in the 70s. It seemed that fall had crept up on little tiny feet while I wasn’t looking…although you wouldn’t know it from stores, who have bypassed Halloween and Thanksgiving and placed Christmas decoration out!
I had a hint of fall way back in August when the maple across the street started turning the most glorious shade of crimson. Pete assured me that the tree was only doing so because it was stressed. He was quite right, as the tree is now, as Shakespeare would say, “Dead as nail in door” or something like that. I really started to notice fall has arrived when Pete pointed out all the ash trees a few streets away from us, noting that they most likely wouldn’t be around much longer. They provide one of Pete’s favorite fall colors; he says that no other tree has that same combination of yellow and wine. They are very unusual.
So that got me looking a little bit at the trees in our neighborhood. Yes, they were slowly changing color. I wasn’t sure how the crazy weather of this past summer would affect the colors. To me, it seems that the leaves aren’t quite as spectacular. What do you think?
The other way I know it’s fall is LOUA planting more trees. We had quite the turnout on Saturday. A HUGE thanks to Laura Fay and all of the OSU students and others who braved the cold to come plant 57 trees. We had an unbelievable number of volunteers: 50! We’ll do the same next week with about the same number of red buds, dogwoods and other smaller trees that will do nicely in the tree lawns that aren’t as wide.
Until next time!
Lower Olentangy Urban Arboretum 