October has been particularly glorious in my part of Wisconsin. Here’s what it looked like late last week when I was walking from my home to the coffee shop about half a mile away.
Many of the trees are a variety of ash, like the one above; this view might not last long if the emerald ash borer moves in. The tree below is a buckeye, a personal favorite (easy for me to say; I don’t have to deal with all those prickly husks!)
While the north-south part of my walk looked like October, the view down a cross-street planted in Norway maples was completely different (below). Except for the gold against the curb, it could be the end of August!
After a productive hour at the coffee shop, I decided to take the long way home to check out the trees along the parkway. Here’s a view to the northwest…
…and looking south over the river.
All in all, it was one of the most satisfying afternoons I’ve had a long time.
© 2010 Anne Bingham and Making It Up as I Go
Anne Bingham: Making it up as I go 
Wow, gorgeous. Fall leaves just don’t change colors in the UK like they do in the US and I miss it so much.
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Really? I wonder why. Too moist? Too mild? Surely some of the tree species are the same!
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Exactly! The tree species are almost all the same. It’s probably because it’s too moist. I did some research on it when I first moved here, and it’s definitely a noticed phenomenon, but as I recall, no one’s exactly sure why.
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Fascinating. I wonder if it has something to do with the soil as well as the general climate. Let me know if you ever hear any more about the why!
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The pictures are beautiful. I am so enjoying looking at bloggers posting pictures of what’s happening in the Fall. Where I live our temps are just beginning to fall, leaves are still green, and crape myrtles are blooming. After the first frost we’ll get to see changes. Thanks for sharing.
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I had to look up “crape myrtle” because they’re not hardy up here. From a distance, they look a lot like the flowering crabapples that make May so beautiful around here. Up close, the flowers seem to be a dense elongated cluster, like a lilac but more compact. What I can’t seem to find, in 15 minutes of browsing nursery sites and various online dictionaries, is the derivation of “crape.” Any ideas? “Crape” and “crepe” both seem to refer to a wrinkled fabric texture (think crepe paper), so does it maybe refer to the texture of the bark? The flowers?
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Wisconsin is really pretty. We haven’t peaked here in my part of Connecticut yet, but it’s getting close. I just got back from a trip to the north of me and I noticed the same oddity–some vistas have brilliant oranges and reds and golds, while others are mostly lush green. Go figure.
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Andrea, there’s another oddity I didn’t mention. We drove west to Madison yesterday and once we got 50 miles west of the Milwaukee area, the reds and golds blanketing the hills faded abruptly to gray- brown. It’s all pretty much the same kind of trees and the same glaciated terrain, so I’m wondering if the difference is rainfall. My part of Milwaukee County has been fairly dry for the past three weeks.
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Glorious photos, Anne!
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Thanks for coming by, Hilary! Yes, I’m glad I took the time to fetch my camera, because most of those glorious leaves are now on the ground. {sighs}
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Sigh…those colors are so beautiful!
We do have fall colors here, but they aren’t quite the same as the ones I remember from the East Coast of the U.S. Whenever I’ve been to Wisconsin, it’s been the spring or the summer.
You should see the copper beeches in this town though, and the maples and ashes — pure heaven! What I don’t like quite so much is all the leaves to rake…
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I’ve always wanted to see a copper beech ever since I listened to Maeve Binchy’s book with the same name. There was a large beech tree up the street from us when we moved into our current neighborhood, but it succumbed to something a few years ago, I think the return of Serious Winters. I don’t know if it was a copper beech, though. {goes off to search online for photos}
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Those are some gorgeous photos! The trees here in Mass. are looking pretty this year, too, but I’ve been too busy shivering to take picture. 🙂
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Thanks for visiting, Anna. The photos are all that’s left now… all the trees I featured are now bare and the leaves are mounded in the gutters, awaiting the city’s first pick-up. Sigh. A month from now we could be shoveling snow.
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