Fall color in the land of flowers

As I think I recently mentioned, I was in CT & am now I am back home, but I was there right around the peak of New England fall color.  & it was impressive.  What was -too me- even more impressive is I left here at the height of summer & came back home to autumn.  Yes, Fladidah has an autumn.

Some of you have probably heard the seasons here are subtle (I used to hear that all the time).  They aren't.  They are all quite sudden & could not be more clearly defined if the squirrels all jumped up & down shouting Hey you, welcome to the Equinox.  What they are is short, sometimes only a week or two, or very long (our fist summer here lasted almost ten months). Also, they don't seem to relate to each other the way seasons do in other climates.  Fall, for example, it is not always followed by winter.  Sometimes we have summer, then fall,  then summer again, then maybe straight to winter.  & other times it's once around once more.

I do understand how this could be confusing.  also it gives rise to that horrible old trout:  Don't like the Florida weather, wait a minute it will change.  For the record, they also said this to us in Houston about Houston, in Joisey, about Joisey & in London about London.  That's things about what they say, it's the same all over.

Still, I thought I would take a moment & show you what passes for Fall Color around here.  Once the sun stops scorching & the rain stops pounding (for 20 minutes a day) the local flora have the chance to really open up & well...have sex.  & this is what we get, color-wise.

Just to keep things apples2apples, I made NO alterations to any of these photos, no sharpening the outlines, no fudging the background, nothing.  This is how they came off the camera.  Now, tell me again about that sugar maple in your front yard.