Cousins in the sun

Towering over the understory, a sugar maple (left center) and red maple (top) shared some sun yesterday morning.

The warm, dry fall facilitates nice work in the woods. Thinning of mainly ash and then the cutting to length has made this handy pile of future kindling and bigger wood ready for 18 months under a tarp before boxing up and moving into the garages in the distance. None of this will burn for two years.

Busy inside and out

 Some projects over the last few days:

Crafting

Wood moving

Apple Butter!!!!

Color before rain

Before much needed rain today, an afternoon walk yesterday shows the vibrant nature of the woods, even on a generally cloudy day.

Late-summer color

4

Morning work

What beautiful, cool weather this week! We decided to start the small saw to do some cutting along the driveway. The biggest casualty was a spring-poled apple near a really nice sugar maple. We also took down a few small birches that were diagonal toward the driveway, Trimming, pole sawing, and lopping rounded out the excellent hour and 15 minutes.

Early leaf drop

Each year a few trees have changing leaves by now. The high temperatures at several points since June must have triggered something. We've had several trees already change color and drop nearly all leaves. One large red maple on the south hill was totally yellow a few days ago. Here is the picture of a trail near the house with many birch leaves already down. 

Most trees are still green, like this huge yellow birch farther down the hill. Due to its advanced age, the peeling bark is starting to crack. Big plates of yellowish-silver will mark the tree as a very mature specimen.

Each walk brings more and more beauty.

Morning harvests

This week we've picked great vegetables from the raised beds near the house, as well as perfect berries from the woods. The broccoli ended up small, but they will be marvelous.