Fall Colour

Suddenly, we have quite a few trees turning at least partly colourful, starting with the yellows, but quite a few bright red patches too.  It seems late this year, but when I check last year's photos, I have no shots of fall colour until Oct. 10th, about Thanksgiving.  (I also have - wait for it - shots of the white stuff on only Oct. 17th!).  We'll pretend I just didn't mention that.

It usually starts with the leaves of the Virginia Creeper vine turning bright scarlet.  We have lots of it around the corners of our meadow.  This was 10 days ago.

The other early leaf changing colour here is the Dogwood, several different species of it.

Then the trees start down in the swamps, like these Silver Maple.  Over the short period of years while I've been doing this, I"ve gotten to know which individual trees are likely to turn the brightest red, and you know me, I'm just a magpie.

Now the hardwoods have started, including this beautiful Sugar Maple.  They are usually the brightest trees around here.

But so far it seems that individual branches are turning red, while the rest of the tree remains green.  Bright patches of red on a green tree.

I just drove down the road to catch these this afternoon, glowing a brighter colour after the rain we've had most of the day.

The week of Thanksgiving, starting on the 10th, will likely be the brightest fall colour, right on schedule, as it always seems to be.

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I've been documenting the local 'For the Love of Grey Barn Quilt Trail' as I see new quilt patterns go up on barns north of here.  Today we spotted the 'home' quilt, just put up on the Rocklyn Community Arena.  It's quite different than the others, a celebration of all the things going on in this very small but very vibrant village.  It's on our direct road to Meaford, so we're through it frequently.

I understand the Rocklyn Agricultural Society is one of the key sponsors.  As you can see it has a long history - the recent Fall Fair was the 149th!  I look forward to finding more surprise barn quilts.