Path down toward the Lake

[lavendertook]

Taking you now a little further along the path toward Greenbelt Lake than yesterday. I blurred the borders of the pic to deepen the depth in the center to send you on your way.

Metro decided to start the Veterans Day holiday early by sending less trains this evening, so getting home took double the time with double the crowds--thank you Metro for delaying the holiday for the rest of us. Buuuuut we have tomorrow off and I get to sleep in and catch up on lost sleep, so that makes me happy.

Comments

[mererid]

Absolutely beautiful--I love the light filtering in through the tops of the trees and all of the shades of yellow and green. :D

I hope that you got to enjoy your day off today!

[lavendertook]

Thank you!

It's been a rainy day, so I slept the morning away. Not as much done as I would have liked, but doing a laundry now, so not a total wash out.

[romeny.livejournal.com]

I blurred the borders of the pic

You mean as you focused the pic? This looks so magical. Kind of dumb for them to cut back on trains the night before the holiday.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

No, I did it afterwards as a finishing effect in the iphoto program on my macbook. The Golden Wood. (-:

Yup, typical Metro hijinx.

[belleferret.livejournal.com]

*follows you into the lovely woods*

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

*feels important and rangerish*

[shirebound]

I hope you're still sound asleep!

Oooh, I like that blurring effect.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

All morning. A rainy, cold day conducive to that.

(-: Welcome to the Golden Wood!

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

I love that picture! Those woods were so magical!

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Yay! There's still some leaves yet. I'm not looking forward to the bare trees, but I think they're hanging on longer than last year, which will make the bleakness of winter shorter this year, for which I will be grateful.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. It looks so serene and welcoming.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

It's a lovely little park--a nice respite on the northeast corner of the Beltway.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Wow! It's barely fall there! The trees are all leafy and many are still wearing their green!

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

This was from 3 weeks ago. It's been a very wet, windy, and cold, but not down to freezing fall, and the changing has been weird. A lot of green has hung on for weeks and then just browned out, so some of pre-peak held on a long time, and we mostly skipped peak. We don't have a lot of sugar maples in the area, but the ones we have turned very slowly and held on a long time, which was lovely.

So the day I'm documenting here for the next couple of weeks is one of the few sunny and best pre-peak fall color days we had. We still have a quarter to third of changing leaves still out, but much of them will probably get washed off the next couple of days of rain, as much of them are just browning out. Still, the leaves are hanging on longer than last year, for which I am grateful--it will hopefully make the bleakness of winter shorter.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

That's great that the leaves are hanging on longer there. A respite before the bleak months come. Ours still have some leaves, well, the species that loose their leaves last, like the American lindens (tilia americana). But, like yours, instead of going to gold they are now just kind of browning and falling. We had a very warm September here -- as if it were the summer we never got. I think that's why a lot of the leaves have hung on longer. October has been variable, a little colder than average, but not notably so, and lots of rain, so the lawns are all still very green. So, although we are mostly leafless, it still looks a lot more cheerful around here than it usually does in the beginning of November, when the lawns brown out.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Your October was like ours. And yes, the grass has hung onto its green here, too. I went on a hike this weekend at a park an hour northwest of here between Rockville and Frederick, a little higher in altitude, and it was almost all bare already.

I'm not familiar with lindens. *googles pics* That's a lovely tree. Oaks tend to be some of our last hold outs, but they do brown out most years. We've got some grand old oaks in front of my apartment building.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Your hike sounds like a real pleasure. We did a lot of hiking up the shore two weekends ago. It was cloudy and misty, but still very good.

American lindens, tilia americana, are also called American basswoods here. Maybe they are called that there, too? A lot were planted as street trees in the last decade or so, to replace elms killed by Dutch Elm disease. But there are mature ones around town, too. They get quite big. I think they are similar looking to English large-leaved lime trees (tilia platyphyllos). Tilia cordata, little-leaf linden, have also been popular street trees (called small-leaved lime trees in England). They don't get as tall as the large-leaved sort, but they have the beautiful-smelling small flowers in spring. Perhaps you've heard of linden soap and other linden-scented products? You're lucky to have the oaks. We are almost too far north to grow oaks. I never see any growing wild in local forests. The soil here is poor along this shore, too, very rocky under the clay, and oaks like good deep soil.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

It was a push for me--I was the slowest one of the group, and really lagged behind quite a bit, and there were some challenging hills, but it was good to push myself, and get out and be social. Your weekend sounds like it was magical.

I know the term linden tree--I've never heard of "basswood"--and we may have a ton around, and they may be trees I admired this morning, but I just don't know them. I'm not well versed in all the oval-shaped leaf trees in the area. And I didn't know oaks didn't go further north. Willow oaks have to be my favorite of the big trees.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

I was dying after some of our hikes, too, or my knees were. We did some steepies.

I looked at the hardiness zone map and saw that Duluth (which is right by the lake, which is like an inland sea) is actually is a warmer zone than some places where I've seen oaks thriving -- just as far north, but in the center of the state, away from the lake's moderating effect. I've seen oak doing well about a hundred miles south, north of the Twin Cities, too. But these places both have a lot of farm land. Farmers have to really scratch to get things to grow up here, the soil is so thin, rocky and full of clay. So our lack of oaks must be due to the lack of deep, good soil. Too bad the elms died; besides being magnificent trees, they were much less picky and thrived here.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I'm spoiled by Jersey soil--there's a reason it's called The Garden State. When I did have space for a garden when I was in NC, the soil just wasn't up to speed.