NYC Vignettes: Central Park in Autumnal Tints

Central Park with path, benches and lamps

Central Park in autumn left me with feelings of nostalgia and romance.  I found that the special effects manipulations on my Photo Express iPad app helped to evoke these soft and elegiac feelings better than the unedited photos.  For example, consider these three versions of the above photo:

Which one do you like best?  It’s hard to choose, isn’t it?

I did get carried away with the dramatic, artsy manipulations of my photos from Central Park.  I hope you like the kaleidoscope of colors and images as much as I do.

The Mall

Watercolor sketch of oak leaves and acorns from the trees lining the reservoir at Central Park

 

 

Branching Out

Row of sweet gum trees reflected in Green Lake

Ink and watercolor sketch of sweet gum trees at Green Lake

Hey look!  I’m branching out.  This is a departure from my leaf paintings.  My attempt at painting a whole tree!!

 

 

The Leaves Come Down One by One

An amazing range of colors in these fallen oak leaves

“The leaves came down one by one like great golden flakes; there was no motion in the air to loosen them; their hour had come, and they gave up life easily and gracefully . . . some come hurrying and tumbling down; some drop almost like clods; some come eddying and balancing down; and now and then one comes down as gracefully as a bird, sailing around in an easy spiral like a dove alighting, its edges turned up like wings, and its stems pointing downward like a head and neck.”
— John Burroughs, from The Writings of John Burroughs, “In Field and Wood”

After a few windy days in Seattle, the motion in the air caused leaves to fall in great volumes.  Some of the oak leaves from the two trees near our front sidewalk fell in clumps.  Most of the fallen oak leaves have been brown, but these newly fallen ones still retained some color.  And what a varied palette they displayed.

I hope you are not getting tired of all these autumn leaf posts.  I am still picking up leaves as I walk around, intending to paint them — I have too many awaiting their portraits, and not enough time to lose myself in the work.

“A work emboldens us for a while, and then, if we do not invigorate and reimagine our participation, it begins to enclose us and slowly starve our spirit.”
— David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

I do not find myself at the point Whyte describes — not yet.  I do feel rushed at times and then I’m usually not as happy with my paintings.  But I’m not ready to give up.  The pressed leaves will keep for a while, and maybe I can keep trying to capture them on paper into the winter.

Watercolor sketch of oak leaves

Underlying pencil sketch for watercolor painting of oak leaves

Watercolor sketch of colorful oak leaves

 

 

The Time of the Illuminated Woods

“Now is the time of the illuminated woods; they have a sense of sunshine, even on a cloudy day, given by the yellow foliage; every leaf glows like a tiny lamp; one walks through their lighted halls with a curious enjoyment.”
— John Burroughs, from The Heart of Burrough’s Journals, ed. Clara Barrus

Dog walker at Green Lake

Illuminated tree at Green Lake

“[The leaves] have ripened like the grain and the fruit; they are colored like the clouds at sunset; and their demise seems a welcome event.  They make the woods and groves gay; they carpet the ground as with sunset clouds; it is a funeral that is like a festival; it is the golden age come back.

The falling of these gayly colored leaves seems to make a holiday in nature; it is like the fluttering of ribbons and scarfs; it does not suggest age and decay; it suggests some happy celebration.  They seem to augment the sunshine, to diffuse their own color into it, or to give back to it the light they have been so long absorbing.”
— John Burroughs, “In Field and Wood,”  from The Writings of John Burroughs

I love these descriptions of fall foliage. I can’t think of anything to improve upon them.

Filling Our Souls with Warmth and Gaiety

Fall color on the shores of Green Lake

“However we may feel about strong colour during the spring and summer, there are few who do not welcome it in the autumn garden.  It is as if we wished to fill our souls with warmth and gaiety against the time when winter with its cold white silence shall lie upon the land.”
— Louise Beebe Wilder, Colour in My Garden, 1935

My 40-year-old dictionary has been getting a real workout pressing leaves this fall.

 

 

That Golden Time of Year

“Yellow the bracken,
Golden the sheaves . . .”
— Florence Hoatsen

Watercolor sketch of fall leaf

Last week I celebrated the color red in the landscape.  Today’s post gives equal time to the yellows, golds, and greens.

Path at Green Lake

White birch with dappled leaves

Watercolor sketch of ginkgo leaf

Watercolor sketch of fall leaves

 

 

 

Autumn’s Red Hues

“We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone.  It is the color of colors.”
— Henry David Thoreau, October, or Autumnal Tints

Looking down the street where I live

“As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight.”
— Henry David Thoreau, October, or Autumnal Tints

We are certainly seeing the sunset colors of October in our Seattle foliage right now.  These are some of the things I see as I walk around my neighborhood:

Jeweled leaves on bushes

Fall
by Edward Hirsch

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s
Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

Season of Mists and a Road Trip with Clouds

Morning clouds swirl on the hillsides above the Columbia River north of Wenatchee, WA

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness . . .”
John Keats

The drive back home to Seattle from Chelan was a wet, misty affair.  But the low clouds clinging to the hillsides and mountainsides created a beautiful, moody atmosphere as I covered the miles.  I drove Hwy 97-alt south along the Columbia River to Wenatchee, and then drove west on Hwy 2 over Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains.  It’s a great fall drive with lots of color.

The gray skies dulled the colors a bit along the Columbia River

Yellow poplar trees along the Columbia River

Hwy 2 as I approached Leavenworth

Along Hwy 2 in the Cascades

Moss-covered branches

A little open meadow along Hwy 2

Fall color on the mountainside near Stevens Pass

Tree branch with waterfalls

Road trip on Hwy 2 in autumn

Tree-Watching and Listening Project: The Music of Trees

Strolling along tall cedar trees, Washington Park Arboretum

I made a special visit to the Washington Park Arboretum yesterday to experience Paths II: The Music of Trees, a series of seven sound installations by composer Abby Aresty.  She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington, and this outdoor music project is her dissertation.  She recorded natural sounds at these sites in different seasons, and then used them in compositions, which are broadcast in three-hour “concerts” on Wednesdays and Saturdays in October. You can read more about this remarkable project in this Seattle Times article.

I didn’t want the month to pass without checking out this unusual art project.  Armed with a map from the Visitor’s Center, I strolled the paths looking for the seven listening sites.  As always, I enjoyed wandering among the many tall trees of the arboretum.  And the unique soundscapes made this visit especially memorable.

“Twisted things continue to make creaking contortions.” (Gaston Bachelard). At Site 1, twisted plastic tubing becomes “mutant” branches.

The path near Site 1: The Music of Trees

Staircase under Japanese maple, Washington Park Arboretum

Walking beneath the rhododendrons at Site 4, where the sounds featured raindrops on leaves

Rhododendron bud

Site 6 used hanging sculptures like wind chimes, and the music incorporated the sounds of falling leaves.

Looking up into the maple tree at Site 7. I couldn’t hear the sound concert because a maintenance crew was blowing leaves down the way.

Washington Park Arboretum

Light-dappled curtain of leaves

Magnolia

Colorful Japanese maple against evergreen

Cluster of oak leaves

Bench, Washington Park Arboretum

Street light, Washington Park Arboretum

Scarlet and Yellow, Golden and Brown

Green Lake in autumn

Scarlet and yellow,
Golden and brown,
Winds of October
Blow all the leaves down.
Tear from the branches
Their curtains and spread
Carpets of color
Beneath them instead.
Glittering with rain
Or ablaze in the sun,
Falling in showers
Or dropped one by one.
Scarlet and yellow,
Golden and brown,
Winds of October
Blow the leaves down.

As far as I know, this is one of the few times that I am repeating a poem that I have previously posted on this blog!  I still can’t find the author of this poem, which I first read in a Waldorf school parenting class.  It certainly fits the landscape around Green Lake this week.

Foot path at Green Lake

Fall foliage at Green Lake

Carpets of color

Curtains of red against green and yellow

On the path at Green Lake on a windy October day

Fallen black walnut among the leaves

Winds of October, wild sky over Green Lake