Autumn Photos Around Skylands
One of the best times to visit the Northeast is during autumn when one can enjoy the glorious colors of the season.
Cheryl DuLong and Wendy Norling, who work up at Skylands, my home in Maine, love the outdoors and nature. They often keep me updated by sending photographs of the property and the surrounding areas. Here are some wonderful fall images captured while walking around Skylands.
Enjoy.
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- It’s always nice to see the photos taken by others at my homes. Cheryl took this photo leading to the main driveway at Skylands. The changing leaves look so beautiful mixed with the evergreens.
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- This wall is seen outside the laundry room windows. The trees cast such interesting shadows on the wall. The small tree on the left is witch hazel. Witch hazel is a genus of flowering plants in the family Hamamelidaceae and is closely related to the sweet gum. Most species flower from January to March and if given enough room to spread and grow, they will display a beautiful and fragrant border of spidery blooms when everything else is still winter gray.
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- From this location at one of the natural pools of Skylands, one can see some of “Rockefeller’s teeth” at the top – large, irregular blocks of granite that serve as guardrails.
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- Below the evergreens on the woodland floor are lots and lots of pine needles. I like to collect some of the fallen brown colored pine needles and use them to cover the footpaths around my home.
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- The leaves are turning everywhere. These stone steps lead to the lost pool.
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- This is what the lost pool looks like in fall – now drained of water and cleaned. My outdoor grounds crew will fill the pools again in spring.
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- On top of the Western Terrace, one can see the kiwi vines on the lattice pergola. All the kiwi vines are original to the property.
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- The kiwi vines show such beautiful autumn color. These are at the corner of the Living Hall window. Growing hardy kiwi vines requires extensive space – they can grow more than 20 feet tall.
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- This is the view of the dining room windows below Terrace 1. The large maple tree, Acer, overlooks the newly trimmed scented geraniums. Scented geraniums, Pelargonium, are grown for their fragrant leaves that can mimic rose, pineapple, or even chocolate mint.
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- Here is a fall scene of some of the changing colors of the ferns at Skylands. These are hay scented ferns, Dennstaedtia punctilobula. The fronds release a fragrance reminiscent of fresh mown hay when brushed with a hand.
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- More of “Rockefeller’s teeth” can be seen on the right. On the left is Acer pensylvanicum, better known as the striped maple, moosewood, moose maple or goosefoot maple – a small North American species of maple tree.
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- One never tires from this beautiful view of Seal Harbor. Little Cranberry, one of the five islands of the Town of Cranberry Isles, Maine, can be seen on the left. Great Cranberry is on the right. Also out there – Baker Island, which marks the southwestern entrance to Frenchman Bay. It’s a very different view this time of year when most of the boats have disappeared from their harbor moorings.
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- Cheryl took this photo from the charming Ox Ledge gazebo looking out one of its windows. The gazebo opens to this beautiful large flat garden surrounded by majestic trees.
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- Some of the trees have already lost all their leaves.
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- On the ground, Wendy inspects a group of leaves – maple leaves and one poplar tree leaf in the lower right hand corner. Mixed in are the leaves of a blueberry bush and some moss. Moss is a slow growing wild plant that I often love to use to create miniature woodland garden arrangements. Once the season is over, we always make sure the moss we harvested is returned to the forest where it can regenerate and flourish.
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- Wendy looks up to snap this photo of another changing maple tree next to an evergreen. The colors change largely because of the changes in the length of daylight and changes in temperature. The leaves stop their food-making process, the chlorophyll breaks down, the green color disappears, and the yellow to orange colors emerge.
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- Here, on a moss-covered rock – a moose maple leaf on top and a regular maple leaf on the bottom. The leaves of a moose maple are broad and soft, three to six inches long with three shallow forward-pointing lobes.
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- This is down by the shop where we cook lobsters during summer. This maple tree looks so beautiful above the cooker.
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- In Maine, my vegetable and flower garden are together in one large space completely surrounded by a tall lattice wood fence. Here is the back fence with more fall color behind it.
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- Wendy took this image of the maple leaves through one of the square holes in the fence.
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- I love the layers of color created by all the changing leaves. The most brightly colored foliage is found in Canada, the northern United States, Scandinavia, northern and western Europe, the Caucasus region near the Black Sea, Russia, eastern Asia, Argentina, Chile, southern Brazil, Korea, Japan and New Zealand’s South Island.
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- And here’s another view of the woodland looking from the road to the playhouse. This is peak “leaf peeping” here in the Northeast. Soon all the deciduous trees will be bare. If you’re in the area this weekend, I hope you’re able to enjoy some nature’s gorgeous autumn colors.
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