Fall Foliage, SE Mass, 10/15-10/17

 

Fall Foliage is coming on slow this season, with some news outlets saying that we are close to a month behind schedule. This is Bourne, Cape side, where almost everything is still green.

We basically went up Route 105, from Marion to Halifax, before heading up Route 58.

This part of New England sort of loses the foliage lottery every year, at least compared to heavyweights like Vermont or New Hampshire. We turn over late, and there are no mountains from which to view a colorful valley. In southeastern Massachusetts, you can only see as far as the tallest tree allows.

We were forced to go for lakes to get shots with a bit of positive vantage point to them. In this article, those two lakes are Long Pond in Lakeville and Monponsett Lake(s) in Halifax.

I should add that, to those who seek foilage, the game is often changing by the day, and a too-early fruitless trip one Sunday could be followed by a too-late return trip the following Sunday where the leaves peaked and then went brown.

I'd blame these two for photobombing my shot, but to be honest, I sort of waited for them to roll into it.

We fire a lot of shots out the windows of moving cars, we pull over suddenly if we see a cool tree, and we be creepin' through the hood at 5 MPH if we see a bunch of cool trees in a row and decide to make a video. All of these We traits- which are actually Me traits- means that I tend to do this solo, or with an ex-GF who is used to my eccentricities and kind enough to not let me make the trip alone.

I actually visit this tree- which is off West Monponsett Lake- every year, as it turns over early and has a beautiful red color.

Monponsett Lakes are somewhat pine-heavy and you get a lot of dull green for whatever flashes of red you can find, but it is still a pretty good spot to check out for any Leaf Peepa. That may be Long Pond, they all kinda look alike if the photographer is sloppy enough.

If I had my LL Bean duck boots on instead of New Balance sneakers, I would have waded into the lake to try to get more reflection from that red tree... but this is more of a Hobby than a Living, and this is what you get for free.

I may be viewing this wrong, and a serious arborist might be able to corrrect me, but I think I have pre-peak, peak and post-peak mixed in with some Hasn't Started To Change Yet, all in one photo.

A pretty good example of what I was talking about earlier regarding Monponsett Lake being mostly green with a splash of red here and there. No disrespeck to Mopo, where I lived for 5 years. I actually tried to schedule a field trip and secure funding for a foliage tree planting project on West Monponsett Lake when I was a teacher, but the school director figured out that I was just trying to use school/town funding to give my home a Vermont-style lake view, and nixed my proposal. The school was in Charlestown, btw... Hey, Mopo, I tried.

Sometimes if you go Leaf Peeping too early, you have to really zoom in on the tree to get decent color. I have written and erased "colored" more than once while writing this article, partly because Green and Brown are colors, also to not offend African-Americans, even though I am writing about leaves.

We will be back in a few days, probably along the same basic route.