November 5: Bonfire night and you can see the leaves falling

Today when I got to the tree I found the leaves falling. It was cold, grey and a small wind was gusting, bringing down a scattering of leaves. Just now and again. Just a few but enough to show. It is the first time I have seen it this year. I managed to catch one in a photo, quite a trick with the long delay on my digital camera. Oak trees are individual and there are already one or two that have lost almost all their leaves ours is somewhere in the middle losing its leaves late but not last.


If anyone has read from the start of the blog, you may have noticed that I said this was a sessile oak. I was quite wrong it is a pedunculate oak. Look at the photo. The acorns are on little sticks (like elves' pipes) and the leaves slap up against the twig. Sessile oaks are the other way round and are mostly in the North of England. (I learn from the dictionary in my tool bar that "sessile" means sitting on the twig and "pedunculate" means on a stalk - or peduncle. The adjectives apply to the acorns not the leaves.)

Anyway I publicised this blog to all the people on my address book yesterday and lots of you replied (thank you) most of you seem interested. Some people were positively complimentary. One even said it was "better than watching paint dry" - how did he guess that that is the subject of my next blog?! I'm personally find the paint-drying process very visually exciting. (Alas I find I have been pre-empted at watching-paint-dry.com - though sadly their live web-cam is no longer active).

Talking of surprising things on the web (which we weren't) I learned the other day that for the last seventy years of my life I have been tying the bows on my shoes the wrong way. My shoe laces, which kept on coming undone, were tied with granny knots. Now my shoe laces stay tied up all the time just like everyone else's. Here is a link to Ian's Shoelace Site which has so transformed my life.

Anyway Lynette from New Zealand has come up with a wonderful idea. Outside her window is and oak tree that is just growing its leaves in spring and the plan is have both an oak tree losing its leaves and one growing them on the same blog. Let's hope we can make it work.

The last photos show various stages of an oak leaf changing colour with the last one showing a seedling growing up among the leaf litter. I imagine it is a seedling from this year. (I'm awaiting a book on the ecology of oaks so I'll start to know what I'm talking about - but if any of you know more, please comment.)