Vermont Foresters Think Foliage Season Will Be Gorgeous, Despite (Or Because Of) Wet Summer

Fall foliage in Charlotte, Vermont in October, 2023.
After a rough, wet summer, foresters still expect
the upcoming foliage season to be beautiful.

 The weather is very much like you'd expect in July this week, but if you look at Vermont hillsides, the colors of autumn are starting to creep in. 

So will this year be a dud or a beauty?

Vermont Public recent interviewed Josh Halman, the forest health lead for the Vermont Department of Parks and Recreation. He's one expert who thinks we're in for a good season. 

He has reasons. 

For one thing, the state is certainly not in drought, despite the current stretch of dry weather. 

Soil moisture is still good. Trees were never stressed for want of water this year, and they aren't now as they prepare to go into dormancy. 

Stressed trees sometimes create lackluster foliage, so we're in good shape there. 

On the other hand, if it's too wet, like this summer certainly was, fungus can thrive on the tree leaves. While this doesn't harm the overall health of the trees, it can make leaves turn brown and fall off early in the season, dulling the fall colors. 

While autumn, 2023 was certainly pretty, a few spots suffered because some of Vermont's trademark sugar maples struggled with the fungus. Their leaves, instead of turning brilliant orange and red, in some instances just turned brown and shriveled.

Autumn, 2022 brought very little of that fungus, and that year was subjectively, in my opinion the best in quite a few years. 

The good news is Halman said he has seen much less of the that fungus on sugar maples this year, at least compared to last year. That means the sugar maples should put on a good show. 

Some birch and aspens, however, are having trouble with fungi, so leave on some of those varieties are failing and falling fast. 

Fall foliage season is quite important to Vermont. The summer's floods might not have an effect on the actual foliage, but could limit the number of leaf peepers that come up for the show. 

 Vermont tourism officials and attractions in the state are putting out the word that Vermont is very much open for business, the roads are back open so you can get from Point A to Point B,  The inns and restaurants and corn mazes and such are all ready for visitors. 

There's spots of color already, now that we're into mid-September. That's probably thanks in part to cool weather a week ago. It's gotten unseasonable warm again, and largely sunny, so I think the pace of color change is temporarily slowing slightly. But it will continue on its march to an eventual peak season, as it always does. 

Changes will come rapidly late this month and in early October,. How long foliage season stays gorgeous depends on the weather, of course. . Calm, still days in October will keep it going for quite awhile. Windy rain storms will have the opposite effect. 

No matter how you slice it, though, you should have plenty of opportunities between now and mid to late October to enjoy the color, as we do every autumn. 

 

 

Longing For Color: Photo Shows Exactly Why We Look Forward To Spring

A beautiful spring evening in my St. Albans, Vermont 
back yard. Photo taken on May 5, 2023.  Click on the 
image to make it bigger and easier to see. 

The snapshot photo in this post was taken in my St. Albans, backyard on the evening of May 5, 2023.

As far as composition and artistry and all that, the photo isn't much. But this time of year, I can't help just staring at it. 

The colors! As we are in this especially drab, gray, relatively snow-free winter, you're going to want to click on the photo, make it bigger and stare lovingly into it. 

The greens, with the speckled blue sky and the pops of yellow from the daffodils just bring such joy and, I don't know, ahhhh.

In three months or so, we will be free from this imprisonment of monotonous gray, brown, and dirty white.  With any luck, by early May, our surroundings will look something like the photo in this post. 

By the way, if you want more spring images to warm your heart, I've added a video to the bottom of this post. 

Anyway, sure we had blue skies for a change on Sunday, which were extremely welcome. But by February, we all wait desperately for the color that true spring brings. 

Click on the photo to make it bigger and easier to see. The late afternoon/early evening light and shadows in the photo bring out every possible shade of green. It helps that the tiny new leaves have that tender new born sort of bright baby green. 

You can see that the lawn could stand a mowing, but that tall grass looks so luxurious.  If I'm not mistaken, Jackson the Weather Dog that evening spent quite a bit of time rolling around in that grass. Which was a great idea. So I joined him. 

Whether you admit it or not, you would have done the same. 

 Check out that sky.  Sure, the beautiful blue skies on Sunday were a nice switch from the weeks of gloomy overcast we had, but Sunday's sky was still a cold, winter blue. 

The springtime blue sky in the photo has a benevolent, warm feeling to it. The scattered clouds complete the painterly feel of the atmosphere. They also have a vaguely unstable look to them, as if promising some springtime showers. 

You might guess from the photo that I like daffodils. Those pops of yellow just make me happy every spring. I have varieties that bloom early, mid-season and late to keep the show going. 

My only regret is I only have about 600 or so daffodils planted on my property. I wish I had thousands. Worse, I ran out of time to plant additional ones this past autumn. Well, there's always next year.  

I have lots of photos of my springtime gardens. My excuse for having the photos is it helps me plan improvements to the property. 

But frankly, I spent an embarrassing amount of time in February looking at those photos as entertainment. Just to take my mind off winter. Even winters as mild as this one has been.  

I know many people like winter. There's a lot of reasons why people would. But those green spring days and evenings  are absolutely heavenly. If there is a heaven, I hope it looks something like what's in the photo.

Video: Spring images from 2023. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.