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| The mountain ash on the left has definitely started to turn color |
For the last ten days I have noticed a general fading of the brilliant summer green. Greens are starting to be just a little washed out. The odd tree is obviously showing full yellow fall colors. It doesn't help any that we had lows of plus three a couple of mornings last week. In the odd low or exposed area I'm sure that there was frost.
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| This tree has had a touch of frost. The top leaves are more white than yellow. By the way I don't know what this tree is called. |
So here it is Aug. 22, and I've begun talking about fall. Usually at this time of year, some of the early grain crops have ripened . On dryer years harvesting of early grain crops has begun. Not this year. Farmers were late in seeding and there has been abundant moisture.
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| This little poplar has definitely had it with summer. |
So from a purely selfish point of view, I would like to suggest that we do not call Sept 21, the equinox , the first day of fall. The equinox should be the middle of fall. Now I know that in more southern areas this would not make any sense. Well, we could modify this idea according to latitude. Higher latitudes could have an earlier fall season and lower latitudes could have a later fall season. While I'm at it let's carry it on with winter, summer and spring. The mid point of our seasons seems to be more at the equinoxes and the solstices than the beginning of the season .
