Everything is Falling

The leaves. The temperature. People's moods.

Ah yes, the almost-November syndrome. And after relentless days of rain and grey, everything and everyone is a bit ugly. Fickle Mother Nature has followed up her most glorious, colourful days with dismal ones.

Not all the leaves are down - but most. And with all the rain, it makes it difficult to keep on top of the blowing. These pictures were taken before we did our first blowing, and when it stops raining, we will do a second to get what has fallen since.

There is a rumour of wet snow by the end of the week, so I guess things could be worse. We all know it is coming, but not that quickly, please. Our earliest recorded snowfall since we have been here - at least one that stayed - was November 5th. And that same year, the last snowfall was May 5th. Let's not repeat that, shall we.

There was also a bit of an adventure this week retrieving a runaway boat. During one of the high winds, it blew into open water and was spotted moving around the bay. By next morning, it had found shelter on the lee side of Booze Island.

Since our boats have all gone into hibernation, our canoe became the rescue craft.  Luckily, there was absolutely no contact with the very chilly water. The end of the story is a happy one, with the errant boat back on terra firma. And some very grateful owners.

Hopefully, the sun will come out soon - maybe in time for the little Trick or Treaters, something that we obviously don't see here - but a costume with a rain coat is just no fun.

The Foliage and the Weekend Were Perfect

I don't think I can remember a Thanksgiving weekend that was as beautiful as this one was. The weather was unbelievably mild (someone actually went in the water on Saturday). And the colour totally reached its peak on Saturday.

When we went for the tin boat ride, I didn't have my camera. So we went out again this afternoon and I took quite a few pics. Even with boat motion, they are not too blurry and I think capture the colours. I love the juxtaposition of the colours to one another, the leaves to the evergreens, and the contrast of the foliage against the trees that are nearly gone and how the birches stand out in the colour.

I hope you enjoy these. There are 35 here and I just decided to share them all. No editing.

It really is like living in a Group of Seven painting at this time of year.

Fall Foliage Update

Well, in my humble opinion, we are not yet at the peak of colour. At least not in some areas. It's odd that one travelway will have great colour and another seems to be weeks behind.

There are some patches of good colour like this, which is along Salmon Lake Road.

And then, just a little further down the same road it looks like this (excuse the car in the shot).

I'm not good at math, but I still don't think the leaves are at 50% colour yet. I am shocked at how much green there still is. Some trees haven't started to turn at all. The birches went first, with their yellow hues.

Here are a couple of pictures of the bay - again, one side further ahead than the other.

The one thing that is pretty consistent from what we've seen is that the pines are dropping needles like crazy this year. We can hardly see our stone path now.

So I am guessing that we either aren't getting the glorious colours this year, or they are still a bit away.

Here's a sumach shot I took a few days ago, and again you can see a lot of green in there with the luscious red. But I will keep checking and posting.

Today is a magnificent day here with bright sunshine and very "fall-ish" light. But a wonderful change from the steady downpour yesterday. And the first semi-dark morning. Yuck.