Monday, November 05, 2007

Natural beauty

When I first moved to the Northeast, I was so disappointed when we moved beyond peak leaf season. The blaze of color was so amazing to these color-starved eyes that it was just downright depressing once the leaves started falling and the brilliant colors started to fade.

But after a few years of that, I began to look beyond the obvious beauty of the peak of autumn toward the more subtle delights. Here are a few that I saw the other day at a nearby park.



This bark reminded me of an Aran sweater. There are several trees that have this kind of twisted bark facing the lake, but the bark on the opposite side is linear. I wonder if cold winter winds caused this to happen? Nevertheless, it is quite stunning.



I've always loved the look of bare-limbed trees against a brilliant blue sky. Nature's lace.



Even though we are well past peak here in the Finger Lakes, this stubborn crabapple tree is hanging onto its leaves and fruits.What delightful color!



And this one just made me giggle. All the picnic benches lined up in this way reminded me of dancing poodles in a circus. I'll bet they'll look even more like poodles once they have snow on them in the winter!

2 comments:

Jenn said...

Wonderful pictures! The picnic tables are a riot!

Knitting Linguist said...

The pictures are great! That tree bark is really stunning -- there must be a way to make a sweater that looks like that, no? The benches made me laugh, too; they look like they're about to start hopping along in a line :)