Lately I have been really taking in the beautiful colors of Autumn. The leaves on the trees are lovely, and the individual maple leaves on the ground hold just as much magic for me this year as they did when I was a child.

On my weekly walks with friend Cynthia, we notice each week how the colors and trees change. I took the photo above about 2 weeks ago, mid-October.

We have had frost a few days in the last week here in Lansing. In spite of that, I keep seeing signs of spring activity in nature. I even have seen two mosquitoes in the last week.

My two remaining tomato plants kept flowering until I brought them into the mud porch which is not heated. I finally cut off the blooms a week ago, to give the still-green fruit more plant energy. I was able to harvest 3 red fruits since then, and there is one more on its way to ripeness, thanks to that slightly-protected area.

We also are seeing wildflowers lately, types which we normally see in spring and summer. There has been a series of dandelions blossoming in my driveway. We have seen a good scattering of wild violets in the side yard as well, and a geranium has a few small pink bits peeking out. It is rather wonderful to see nature working like crazy at a last chance to reproduce before winter arrives.

I had to scrape frost off my car today. That was not the first frost, but the first I saw with my own eyes. I will celebrate the color I can find, as long as there is not snow covering it!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 at 9:04 pmand is filed under Lansing, Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.