Fall Beauty 2012

Steve and I went to the historical town of Jacksonville, Oregon last week to see if there were any interesting pictures to take of the buildings there. Well...as it turned out, we weren't inspired by the buildings, but I certainly went crazy with my macro lens and had a grand time! After weeding out all the bad shots, I got 85 keepers! Whee!!! :D This was a maple tree I noticed as we walked up one street and I simply had to stop and take pictures of the sun shining through some leaves! Work is keeping me buried, but I'll have about 20 minutes tonight to bounce around to some of your lovely photo streams! It will be a very nice adventure for me and I can't wait to see what you all have for me to see! :)

I took another picture of the Japanese maple tree I saw in Jacksonville last week and I liked the way the sun flare looked! :) Internet service in southern Oregon was down all day long! I've been too busy to worry about it, but it's interesting how dependent we become on having this luxury! Thanks for all of your visits, I had hoped to visit some photostreams this morning but it will have to wait until tomorrow I'm afraid, since we just got our internet back just when it's time to go to bed!! *tantrum* I did have time to visit some pages last night and had a very nice time, but didn't get to everyone's by the time I needed to log off. *sigh*....work is very nice but I miss all of your lovely photos!

Yesterday I enjoyed a photo walk along our ridgeline and found countless beautiful leaves in every color of the fall spectrum, glowing in the waning light. This is just one of them! :)

I am enchanted by glowing leaves, so when autumn rolls around, I find myself taking endless pictures of these colorful masterpieces. There's no end to the colors, patterns, and combinations! This particular leaf is from a California Black Oak tree, which can be found as far north the Umpqua Valley in Oregon. Most of our trees are Oregon White Oak trees, which have rounded leaves. By the way, I've uploaded two other pictures today and I hope you'll visit them too! Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :)

Yesterday Steve and I visited the one arboretum in this area to see if there were any colorful trees to photograph. We were only there for about 20 minutes before it started raining again, but I still managed to get lots of wonderful pictures! We are hoping to go back tomorrow for another photo shoot! Palmerton Arboretum is located on 5 acres in the quaint little town of Rogue River, Oregon. There are almost 90 species of mature trees and many native plants and shrubs as well.

I found this lovely leaf laying on a sun-bleached manzanita log and thought the textures and color were just amazing to look at. I find myself staring at leaves in fascination from different angles and when they're on a tree, I like to see how the light passes through them and how they appear from both sides. So beautiful, aren't they?! :)

I love to find leaves that get caught on the way down to the ground, because they usually make really interesting pictures. When Steve and I went to the Palmerton Arboretum last week, we found lots of great leaf shots! This leaf was stuck in an evergreen bush covered with bright red berries! :)

(+ 2 inset images) The Palmerton Arboretum has a wide variety of trees to appreciate, and I loved the many-lobed leaves of the Horse Chestnut trees I found growing there.These trees are also covered with countless prickle-covered nut fruits which look like something from another planet! Horse Chestnut Trees are native to southeast Europe and are commonly cultivated in parks around the world. They have beautiful pink flowers which turn into horse chestnuts. They get their name from the similarity to the true chestnut combined with the false information that the nuts cured horses of chest ailments. In fact, these nuts are poisonous to horses! Horse Chestnuts are also known as conkers, which is the name of a children's game played by two people. After threading a pair of strings through two nuts, each takes turns trying to break the other's conker. Here is a fun video to show you what Conkers is all about! :) The Game of Conkers . If you would like to know more about these trees, Wiki has a very nice page here: Wiki: Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)

I got home from my trip to San Francisco last night and it was super! I spent almost all my time helping out my father, and we got a lot of needed projects accomplished! Best of all, it was fantastic to be with him, as it's been a whole year and I missed him so very much. I only see him about once a year so every moment is extremely precious to me. I did get one day to go to the amazing Academy of Science and I took lots of pictures. I will post some n the next few weeks. (If you visit San Francisco, put it into your itinerary, what an incredible place!) This picture is another one from the Rogue River Palmerton Arboretum, and as you can see, it seems there's no end to the loveliness found there! I'm hoping to be back to my usual posting and commenting in the next day or two once I'm settled! I've missed all of you so much and can't wait to see what you've all been posting!! Thanks for all the comments and favorites and as usual, your patience while I've been away! :) And finally, thanks for all the wonderful comments and favorites on my pumpkin picture, it was great fun to carve them and a happy surprise to get a nice picture too! *BIG HUGE HUGS* to all of you!!! :)