Fall Photo Dump

I feel like I really tried to enjoy fall as much as possible this year.  Much of that was probably taken care of by my almost-daily Walktober walks, where I eventually had a collection of favorite trees and scenic spots that I kept coming back to throughout the month.  Leaves were quite pretty this year aside from the maples that crapped out early and turned brown due to a fungus.  Timing felt good--better than last year when reds peaked early and everything else was just sort of a dingy orange-brown and yellow.  In the last two weeks we hit a beautiful peak and then rapidly declined to a very small number of leaves left at all.  Even though the weather was abnormally warm, it's like it hit a limit and BOOM--things changed so fast.  It's left me a bit sad that we're past the majority of the color, but honestly there's so little daylight to enjoy them at this point anyway, thanks to DST ending overnight after Halloween.  Cramming walks in is nearly impossible now, so I'm embracing quick walks in the dark (only in my immediate neighborhood), just to get some fresh air, exercise, and a little mental health boost.  We might get our first round of snow at the end of this week, though fortunately we're going to rebound back up to above average temps through at least the middle of the month.  El Nino is supposed to hit hard this winter, which supposedly will keep us mild.  Of course, the record-warm Great Lakes won't be freezing anytime soon, so in the event the temperature does drop low enough from time to time, we could get hit hard by lake effect long into the winter.  But I will seriously take mid-50s for as long as Mother Nature will dish them out.

Well, before all of that evolved, I did have a few lovely little moments of beauty this fall.  At one point around mid-October, I felt like I had hit my max on all of the walking routes I normally frequent.  Thankfully it hit on a gorgeously warm evening where I could cram in a bike ride instead.  I barely rode my bike all summer.  I don't know why that was a mental block for me, but I probably only rode a few times.  I wanted to do my usual canal path ride to Spencerport before the cold took over and while the foliage was pretty, and that was really my only chance.  The ride out was a bit blinding, but the sun was just setting as I got to the village. 

The ride back was much more comfortable, and the foliage was pretty.  What a gorgeous night--although I did find myself a little irrationally angry at how early it was getting dark already at that point in the month.

Out on one of my walks in the neighborhood, I happened to find this patch of fungi.  There were actually a couple patches in this spot, all with a crazy amount of tiny little mushrooms.  You can tell they were small by looking at the size of the blades of grass.  Not too often you see something this intense in a yard, but I thought it was really cool.

There's a street the next neighborhood over from mine that backs up to woods, and the foliage there is so beautiful each year.  Bright oranges and reds and yellows, all in one stretch behind the houses.  I could never live in that neighborhood because the trees are giant and would make me so anxious when it's windy, but it really does get pretty.

And then there was this tree right around the corner from our house.  It was stunning, especially against a vibrant blue sky.  We had a truly lovely stretch of weather for a solid couple weeks--above average warmth, lots of sun, and no rain.  It made getting in my walks so much easier.

We finally did have a frost a couple weeks ago, though I did my best to protect my garden.  A bunch of my other plants seemingly did not care, because stuff just kept growing.  I snapped a pic of this dandelion that morning.  Zoom in - it's pretty cool!

And here's one of my favorite leaves from my walks...

I was highly entertained that my tiny garden pumpkin was almost the same exact size as one of my beloved glass pumpkins.

Weeks ago I realized I had to start thinning out my hydrangea a bit as it's apparently getting too much sun, which is causing it to grow too many leaves and not enough blossoms.  I had seen something that suggested doing it in fall while you could still get a feel for new vs. old wood and what the shape was with leaves.  While I was trying to thin it out, I accidentally chopped off a spent blossom, which then turned into me cutting off a bunch of spent blossoms to bring in.  Their pale green with magenta accents was so lovely, and who knew (until I needed another vase for round 2) that I had the perfect vase to match!

Remember the fun, yellow, warty pumpkin I grew?  It turned green!  Definitely my favorite this year!

I just cleared out the rest of the growing stuff from my garden over the weekend--not all of the foliage yet, but I harvested a tiny zucchini, a boatload of grape tomatoes, and one more tiny pumpkin that I think will end up like this one.  I'm curious to see if it will ripen similarly, or if it was too stunted by the cold and being picked small.  But what a fun little experiment that turned out to be!

On a totally different front, to no one's surprise, we have a bit of a stuffed animal problem in this house, made worse by Jacob moving out and clearing out the stuffed animals he had in a storage ottoman in his room.  Somehow all of the piles got deposited in Carter's room, and it's been a bit of a disaster ever since.  I decided we had to do something about it, so I bought a stuffed animal "zoo" on Amazon--a four foot wooden tower with elastic string "bars" so you can still access animals that are buried in the bottom.  We're still working on getting it in its final place and deciding who's going in, staying out, or getting packed away or set for donation, but I had to share a little craft project I did.  It came with this little sign for the top, and obviously this just wasn't our vibe.

Imagine my surprise when I realized it was nearly the perfect shape for a hippo head, as this has become a hippo house over the past 14 months or so, after Carter got his first one in the thick of his bad ulcerative colitis flare last summer.  I got an assist from ChatGPT to get a simple hippo face I could recreate and to visualize the placement, and then I set to work painting the backside of the sign.  Look at how cute it turned out!  Not bad for freehand!

The letters are stickers I had leftover from another project.  It's not perfect, but it's adorably imperfect and pretty much exactly what I was envisioning.  I love it!

One rite of fall is, of course, school pictures.  It took a little extra time to get them this year since we never got ordering information for Jacob's, and Carter was sick for his so we had to wait for retakes.  But here they are.  As I changed them out at my desk at work, I found myself marveling at how grown up they are.  It's so crazy, isn't it?

The comparison to Carter's picture from last year is pretty shocking.  He was just starting to look a bit more mature compared to the prior year, but this year is a definite shift.  Puberty is nuts, y'all.

And now, back to one last round of fall.  One of my favorite spots is actually over at the kids' old school around the corner.  The maples all along the driveway turn a brilliant red each year, and it's stunning.  This year they seemed to stay green forever, and then one day they were half turned, and the next time I came through (probably only a day or two later--I walk through there a lot), they were at peak.  But I just love the red as far as the eye can see up the driveway.  It was so lovely one night last week with these fluffy pastel clouds in the distance.

On my way back home, I passed through again, and the sky was lovely.  I couldn't really capture the red trees and the sky at the same time, but I promise it was really pretty in person.

I have more to share from around Halloween, but I'll save that for another post...