Fall Colors Photo Gallery

The colors of fall are surely hillsides of oranges, reds, greens, yellows, and browns... a multitude of trees and undergrowth, with maple the star of the show, and a supporting cast of aspen, oak, evergreens, willow, hackberry, hickory, ash, ironwood, elm, boxelder, and many others, all of them vibrant in the final days before winter's stark bareness.

The colors of fall are also found on a single leaf, or in a bushel of squash, or around a golden apple with its brown speckles and pink cheek.

Every autumn is a one-of-its-kind show whose movements are subject to the powers of weather. One year, when a freeze comes suddenly with its white fangs bared, green leaves turn to brown in a week's time and then are soon blown to the ground by fierce gusts. Another year, when frosts lightly nip at the corners, an enduring performance of changing colors finds a day, and a week, and another week to put itself forth.

Here are images of our piece of heaven... images we caught in their momentary glory on breezy days in the autumn of 2005. Like 2005, what was here is now gone.

Orange on Maples was rare this year.	Sunset as fall colors.	There's tremendous variety in squash and gourds, both in shape and color.
Up the hill and through the woods. We love our entrance on Apple Lovers' Lane.	Boston Ivy growing through the cracks in a garden door.	Northwestern Greening from below, looking up at a white sky.
The trail to pick your own apples via tractor-drawn wagons. Some green lingers after most leaves have fallen.	A lovely Redwell apple tree with an apron of windfalls beneath.	Green grass, yellow apples, and a flaming Pin Oak.

This year was yellow and long. A moderate frost in late September came in on foliage that was in full green, and maple leaves unanimously turned yellow, becoming virtually indistinguishable from their neighboring aspen. Even apple leaves turned yellow, which doesn't happen here frequently. Some greens hung on here and there, and the prevalence of unusually calm air delayed the falling of dried leaves until the middle and later days in November. We were treated to a five-week run, and we drank it all in.

Autumn in a more typical year starts with the red of sumac and the yellow of aspen. Then the maples begin to turn their fluorescent oranges. Oaks follow with burnt reds and browns. But in that more typical year, the show lasts from ten to seventeen days.

The peak of color, I think, relies on the greens that remain in the mix. If there are no greens left to turn, and everything is in color, the peak is past. That's because green is the amplifier. All others are more brilliant when playing off of green. When green is gone, there's less to tickle the retina. Why would you call it peak after one of the beautiful colors has been eliminated?

Within hours after this picture, all of these apricot leaves had blown off.	Deeply-colored Haralson with bright yellow leaves.	Red Oak, but I wonder if Pin-Oakio was carved from Pin Oak.
Yellow leaves on long rows of Haralson planted in 1975.	Golden Haralson against the deep blue sky.	Our massive, 30' tall Columnar Maple wall was a row of small whips when we planted it here.
Corn is a farmer's gold.	Columnar Maple stands out.	Click to enlarge this beautiful shot of apricot!
Yellow, sunlit Maple leaves.	The very last McIntosh apple still hanging.	Black Walnut (foreground) loses its leaves very early. Poplar (behind) is still full and yellow.

Our colorful Minnesota Valley is a secret treasure chest. While weathercasters in the Twin Cities are busy advising viewers to tour the stretch from Duluth south to the St. Croix Trail, our colors are also peaking from Shakopee to Mankato. Here the river bluffs, in their stunning display, vary from a wall-to-wall envelopment of Highway 169 to spacious, long-range vistas. St. Croix is north, and the Minnesota River Valley is south, so you'd expect us to be a week behind as the colors creep or sweep south with the frosts. But we're early. Our arm of the river system colors as early as the St. Croix despite our more southern situation.

So, while the crowd is admiring the beauty of the St. Croix, the few could be cruising the Minnesota via Highway 169 to Mankato. It's okay if that stays a secret.

Several factors enhance the colors in this area (known since the settlers' time as The Big Woods, owing part of its fame to the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House on the Prairie). The enhancements are a function of the abundance of tree species and where they grow on the high or low lands. The river bottom in this sometimes broad, sometimes narrow valley is full of cottonwood, poplar, and other aspen-types, plus black or diamond willow. Their leaves turn yellow. They color early because that's what those varieties do, but it has as much to do with cooler air collecting in the lowlands. We all know that hot air rises, which also means that cold air sinks to the valley. Fall comes early at the bottom. While the yellows spread in the low areas, the first colors appear on the bluffs and highlands. As the days pass, the greens give way to the brilliance of the oranges and reds and yellows on those hillsides. The brilliance of the viewer is in recognizing that the peak occurs when as much as half of the color is still green.

Yellow weeping willow with the windmill. Say that ten times fast!	Do enlarge this beautiful portrait of Haralson. It should be the cover of our apple cookbook.	Late afternoon sunlight plays in the grass between eleven-year-old MN 1606 apple trees.
Boxelder trees, bare in the sunset, are relatives of Maple.	Really pretty Haralson, ready to pick.	Scott County Crab. We were rewarded because we never gave up.
Boston Ivy berries.	Fresh-looking Northwestern Greening apples.	Spirea dances with our fence at the horseback riding trailhead.

One of the most stunning stretches of color I've ever seen is Hwy 212 (previously Highway 169 and Flying Cloud Drive, home to several famous but forgotten roadside fruit and vegetable stands of days gone by) coming south out of Eden Prairie. From the bluff top at Flying Cloud Airport to the bottomland, a length of about four miles, the variety and intensity can be thrilling. Part of the thrill is provided by the scenic view of the city of Shakopee and the vast wetland preserve that forces Shakopee to stay south of the river, and the delicate but awesomely colorful prairie grasses and wildflowers on the little bit of treeless river bluff existing in this area. All of that before mentioning the trees, which, on this segment, are sometimes dominated by screamingly bright pin oaks and red oaks. This exact real estate is actively being developed right now, and we hope they don't destroy it. It's very special.

Apple trees, by the way, are usually among the last to turn from green. We've discussed that briefly in the story about the Spartan apple variety, which stays green longer than it should. At our location, apple leaves most frequently hold their green for that extra long time compared to hardwoods, and then they go directly to brown. They may hold tight to the tree all winter long, falling off only when new growth forces them to do so. This year, our apple leaves turned yellow and fell off by the first of December.

Rainfall and the resultant soil moisture are perhaps as important as temperatures and winds when it comes to how leaves will color and how long they'll hold to the tree. Nutrition certainly plays a part, too, but that goes hand in hand with water supply when we're talking about natural-growing as compared to cultivated, nutrition-enhanced plants and trees. In growing seasons with consistent moisture (which is not descriptive of a typical year around here, where periods of fairly severe drought can be book-ended by periods of excessive rain), leaves tend to be more brilliant and cling longer. In 2005, there was a severe lack of rain in northern Wisconsin and parts of northern Minnesota. It looked like autumn in the first week of August, with leaves yellowing and dropping. Sure, that's north, but it's not the North Pole. Leaves were falling off a month early due to drought stress.

A stunningly beautiful snapshot of Madeline Peterson picking Haralson and Connell Red on November 4, 2005.	Apricot in a navy blue sky.	Multi-colored pear leaves.
Montmorency Tart Cherry with its guest on the top floor (you'll see it if you click to enlarge).	#35 -- Can you identify this plant growing within the forest canopy? your answer and comments.	#36 -- Can you identify this plant growing within the forest canopy? your answer and comments.
#37 -- Can you identify this plant growing within the forest canopy? your answer and comments.	#38 -- Can you identify this plant growing within the forest canopy? your answer and comments.	#39 -- Can you identify this plant growing within the forest canopy? your answer and comments.

A seldom-noted observation related to the value of holding on to some green color involves the hated buckthorn, which is common in these parts. Buckthorn is underbrush. It's either an overgrown shrub or an undergrown tree, but it thrives under the dense canopy of the woods. It has tightly-clustered, glossy, deep green leaves and grows tightly-clustered, pea-sized, black-blue bitter berries and, yes, is prolific in the production of nasty, two-inch thorns. It often has multiple slender trunks growing upright, very close together. Having described it thusly, I thought I should check some resources to verify that I'm talking about the same thing the authorities are talking about. They want it eradicated. So, if you take a peek at the really good photo of buckthorn at http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien like I just did, you'll see that we're on the very same page. Then, if you want to see a really good photo of why it's a seriously unwanted pest, click over to http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants. Check out the picture toward the bottom of the page, where the forest floor is absolutely overrun with buckthorn (our population density here is a tiny fraction of what's shown), to the destruction of the whole system. Nevertheless, the healthy, fresh-looking green of buckthorn leaves -- existing during the coloration of the maples and other hardwoods and persisting several weeks after everything else has given up -- is a wonderful thing. It's one redeeming quality.

Buckthorn can be mistaken for wild cherry or wild plum when dormant. I should know. I accidentally transplanted buckthorn with cherry and plum about ten years ago. Some years passed before I recognized what I had done, and I chopped them down. It's illegal to import, sell, or transport buckthorn in Minnesota. Boy, I was really living on the edge there.

Before they chop them all down, though, I hope someone determines whether or not they contain the cure to cure all ills. It would be kind of a shame to discover that the miracle was growing right in front of our roses and we eradicated it.

Huge Red Oak leaves on an acorn's tiny new seedling, just inches tall.	We're flying these colors!	Maple gave us brilliant burnt yellows on clear, sunny days.
Maple leaves on the ground in the clover.	Sunset-drenched, multi-colored leaves of MN 1606 apple trees.	Peach, as grown at Minnesota Harvest, outdoors. The peaches are tasty, too.
Live Music, a brand new variety in Topper's Apples collection. I just ate one. The flavor and texture are spectacular!	MN 1606 showing blues, greens, and purples.