November 7 - Another beautiful day

It's another beautiful day and the leaf turn continues at its own slow pace. Leaves are falling now, quite a lot in the wind and there is windy weather to come at the end of the week.

Here are a few more pics taken today. The horse that, with the cows, the deer and (occasionally) the pigs, helps to keep the grass short and the straight line at the bottom of the foliage that is so typical of the New Forest. (Look above the horse's head to the right.) Next the twigs at the top right of the tree now almost bare. Then a close up of some turning leaves still on the tree, the colour in the leaf litter and , last, looking up the tree towards where a branch has broken off some time ago.

November 6: The leaves are looking sparser

I've had a tiring day today so it's just the picture. It was taken towards the end of a sunny autumn day about 4 pm. I got one of the books I was expecting today so maybe I'll start to know more of what I am talking about soon.

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.)

November 4 - The sun keeps shining - cold nights to come

Our oak looks pretty green in this picture but if you look at the close up of the top of the tree (zoomed in from the same position) you can see that it is definitely turning. It was an amazing day today and my wife and I took some wonderful autumn pictures. Here are a few of them.

November 3 - A beautiful autumn day

Got some wonderful pictures today of the oak the trees around it, the fungi beneath i, a fallen oak, so we can see its probable ultimate fate and much more. The new photos will, I hope, be on the blog tomorrow. Meantime above is the main picture.

The pictures were taken around midday, which accounts for the brighter light and the different shaddows.

November 2 - the oranging continues

Another sunny day with the oak taken around sunset. No one could think of our tree as green any more!

November 1 - the changes really showing now

The sun came out just as I took this - at about 4 o'clock this afternoon. Compared with the original picture (shown in the heading) you can see the change in colour and and a big reduction in the thickness of the leaves in the middle of the tree. More leaves on the ground too (where else can they go after all?!) This is quite hard to see because of the lighting in the first photo but there is no doubt about it. Little by little there is a change creeping up on the tree. Creeping up on me too come to that.

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins