Nature Lover

I can completely identify. I am always happiest when I am outdoors, as well. Here in Illinois, we aren’t really experiencing “fall”. The leaves aren’t changing color, the temperatures are still in the low 80’s! This just isn’t ‘right’. Fall has always been my favorite season, and I feel I’m being deprived of it this year.
I grew up on a farm, and harvest for me means serious allergies. Yet I take my medicine, and head outdoors anyway. I still love riding in the tractor when I get a chance, or helping to unload the corn. The colors and smells are just “home” to me, but they never cease to amaze me with their beauty.

I love this time of year. The days are mostly pleasant and presented like gaily wrapped packages decorated with awesome colors. Even the air seems special, the days and nights are neither too hot, nor too cold, just brisk and fine.
Enjoy,
Teresa

It’s strange that you should mention the color of the leaves, as I have noticed in the last couple of years the same thing. As I live in Australia and not USA, this seem to be coming the norm.
The leaves in my town did not change color well into winter.
Ron

I live in Texas and the weather has been so nice with lots of sunny days.
It finally got down into the 50’s. We do not get to see all the fall colors here. We had so much rain this past spring & summer that everthing is still green.

I like being out doors a lot. Enjoying the fall days the cooler days!! It gets quite hot here in the summer.

I am enjoying your Blog.
Michelle

Our leaves are changing. I too enjoy a good (nature break) and lucky for me I live in Langley British Columbia. We truly get all four seasons here, and also have the pacific ocean and big beautiful mountains nearby, you don’t have to go very far to get out of any of our cities and enjoy nature.
Walter.

Hi, Judy,

I’m from Chicago but have lived in Los Angeles for 20 years now. I miss Chicago more in the autumn than in any other season.

There is a neighborhood near my home that has oaks and elms and maples. Their leaves change color this time of year and soon fall to the ground. Otherwise, trees and lawns in my neighborhood and throughout Southern California are brown — and very flammable, as people out here are discovering once again.

I like your blog, Judy. You write from the heart — and that’s all you need to do.

George Spink
Los Angeles

You sound like a real Moma! Did you ride on the back of the bike or do you have your own? How about some pics of these trips.
I’m from WV and the trees are struggling to change. They are dropping faster then they are changing colors; looks like another fall with out colors.

I think the great outdoors is best seen through the window of an air conditioned home or automobile. Fall, in Texas, is perfect. The AC hasn’t come on for two day and when I let the dog out this morning I spent a moment wondering if I should dig my light jacket out of the back of my closet. I decided it could wait a few days.

Every time I see, or think about a motorcycle the steel pin in my left leg hurts. I think what got me was the four or five people who walked by my crushed and bleeding body, as I lay on a gurney in the hallway outside the OR, looked at my leg and commented “motorcycle eh?”.

In central Minnesota we are at peak now - or were until the gorgeous day we had today, then winds picked up and some trees are nearly bare, some gold and some still green.
Outside my patio I have a maple that this morning was bright red.Tonight it is bare. Strange but beautiful.
I love fall and feel extremely sorry for those who miss it, don’t you?

H-_Judy
Thank you for a lovely, relaxing page - possibly very useful if one gets up-
tight. Mind you, I don’t, often, as getting ‘het up’ is a useless activity, at any time.
Keep up the good work

All the best

from another Walter

Fall - or Autumn as we always call it - here in the UK is just as unpredictable. But the colours are coming and the streets and pavements of our urban environment are carpeted with large palmate leaves in reds and yellows. We went out yesterday. It was about 40 with a cold SE wind - but a clear blue sky. Beautiful!

Living in Florida I miss autumn in the north or midwest. The only leaves that change color here are the maples very late in the season. Thanks for a putting an autumn vision into words.

What a lovely ride you had! It makes me homesick for the garden.
WhereI live only my maple tree has color. Well, the sicamore trees do drop their leaves whether it is cold or not. The very large leaves sneak across the street and up the drive. You can hear them coming! They gather in my car port and keep me on my toes as I am forever thinking that someone has arrived as I open the door only to find those huge leaves.
From the opposite corner
Linda

The Fall colors of the Great Smokie Mountains are breathtaking!
I see people around me never noticing what Mother Nature presents to us. I live in the Atlanta area and everyone seems consumed in the ‘rat race’. I really think your blog is very nice! As someone else put it, “you write from the heart and that’s all that counts.” This article brings home the beauty of nature, of seeing what’s there at each passing moment.

You have a talented son but apparently he also has a talented mom.

As to lack of color in the trees, it could be that you have not had the cold snap that is needed for the sugars to change. But I also thought your description of corn to be a nice memory-booster. I love your style of writing. Fact is, I love good writing. Perhaps with a little help from Chris, you have catapulted yourself into the first rank of interesting places to go on the Net.

Here in Northwest Ohio, our experience has been similar to yours, although I think fall arrived this week as a low pressure system passed through the area. Night time lows have dropped into the low to mid forties with highs in the fifties since Monday (10/22/2007) with an intermittent chilly fall rain. After last year, when high temperatures remained largely in the fifties through the first week of January, I do not know what to expect so I take each day as a new experience. I think my Grandmother would have called it taking each day as it comes :).

I am a city boy born and bread, so any place with no buildings and a few trees for more than fifty or a hundred feet is a beautiful surprise. Even though I do not have to travel far (less than ten or fifteen miles in any direction) to see open farm land with fields of wheet, corn, and tomatoes, the only forested areas nearby are Metro Parks and Nature preserves consisting of a few acres each of land set aside and let to grow naturally. I am grateful for these preserves, because without them there would soon be no place to see the region much as it had once been.

I enjoyed your post and the replies it generated. Even more I enjoyed the train of thought it provoked in me :). Thank You,

The Fall color is absolutely the best time of year. I live in Southern California - yep we are on fire right now so no happy colors the sunrise is red with the smoke in the air.
I lived the first ten years of my life in Buffalo and remember the wondeful color of fall. My sister lives in Chicago. Great city!
I love the cooler weather. Summer is my least favorite of the seasons. We are having Santa Ana winds from the desert and hopefully it will be cooling off soon. I like your temperature zone. Mine is there, too, except not so low maybe 60 to 70 degrees. I love the Southern California winters.

Normally the nice fair temperatures that you describe are what we have here in Patzcuaro, Michoacan, Mexico. I am a transplanted Texas and really enjoy being away from the big city. Move to Mexico from the Dallas area. October and November are beautiful on the Michoacan country side with multitudes of wildflowers in bloom. There is a rainbow of colors. But temps here have been unseasonably cold so I do begrudge you your mild climate. I can here by way of Chris. Hope that you continue to enjoy nature. I hear that the snow storms will soon be upon you. Take care.
Richard Montoya

We moved to Wisconsin from Iowa and have found that the season is about two weeks different between our locations. We had a heavy frost last night and are well into the high color of fall. Fall is definitely headed your way and it is spectacular. I love the road tours in the country too and watching the changes of the seasons. Enjoy!

Here in the Wash., DC area we had the worst drought in our history. Just in the last 2 days have we begun to get significant rain.

So, it will be interesting to see how being so dry affects the changing of leaf color.

Judy, you blog is delighful! I like your descriptive writing and your keen observations. Here in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia we watch fall colors begin at the top of the BlueRidge and Massanutten Mountains and then march slowly down the sides of the mountains. The colors are lovely and each year they seem to try to outdo previous years.

Keep up the good work on your blog.

J.