A Kaleidoscope of Autumn Color: Redux

Oh man, what an awful week to be too sick to venture outdoors!  For this is just the week in October when Autumn is in her glory in Saratoga County, and I've been stuck at home.  Although I finally saw my doctor and started medication to treat my gagging, painful, sleep-depriving sinus infection, I'm still feeling too wobbly to stray too far from my sofa and cup of hot tea.  I have been wandering around my old blog posts from mid-October, however, and one of them from 10 years ago brought me nearly as much pleasure as actually engaging in the powerline walk it represents.  So I'm repeating it here and now.  The blogpost, I mean, not the walk, from the comfort of my couch. I'm hoping some of you, my readers, will enjoy this post as well. God knows, with all the horrors occurring in other parts of the world, I need to rest my eyes on images other than those in my newspaper or on my TV screen.

A Kaleidoscope of Autumn Color (Oct. 5, 2013)

Our string of cloudless, blue-sky days came to an end on Friday, bringing welcome rain to a thirsty earth and overcast skies that continued on through Saturday.  Those pearl-gray skies cast an even, shadowless light across the autumn landscape, a light in which the colors of changing leaves and grasses and ferns and flowers glowed even more richly than on bright sunlit days.

As I walked a high and curvaceous powerline trail above the Hudson River at Moreau today, I marveled at how, with every turn of the trail and climb of a hill, the magnificent colors were rearranged in ever-changing arrays of green and gold and ruby and amethyst, as radiant and wondrous as the patterns formed by chips of jewel-like glass in a kaleidoscope.

The fruit-bearing trees and shrubs and vines are heavy with fruit this fall, as evidenced by this Hawthorn tree burgeoning with berries, its boughs also weighted with climbing grapes.

I even found a tree with ruby-red apples growing wild!  A deer trail worn through shoulder-high grass led me right to the tree with its windfall bounty littering the grass beneath and filling the air with the fragrance of ripe fruit.

I love the color combination of dark-blue berries and crimson leaves on Virginia Creeper vines.

These Cladonia lichens, too, seemed extra bright, the fruiting bodies glowing a deep, rich red against the gray-green thallus.

Brilliant color everywhere!  Even underfoot!

The high trail along the mountain ridge eventually descended to the river, where I lingered to take in the beauty of the reflections.

Purple-stemmed Asters continue to bless the roadsides with their beauty, as they also bless some rather sleepy Bumble Bees with flowers still heavy with pollen.