Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Fall is in Full Swing!!! ...In Summer?

Fall is in full swing!  The leaves are falling in bursts throughout the day.  Every morning I walk outside to a fresh yellow carpet upon my back porch.

yellow leaf carpet on porch


Just one problem.

It's 
still 
summer.

Oh, boy....

The leaves are falling like crazy, and it happens in waves.  It's like the trees all coordinate with each other and, regardless of breezes or lack thereof, fall from the trees at the
                                                                                          exact
                                                                                               same
                                                                                                     time.

It's really quite creepy.

But that's not all.  Here's the black walnut tree that I keep my suet feeder attached to in my front yard, right beside the street:

fallen leaves all over

Yellow leaves galore, right?

Ok, now let's change the camera angle:

My personal fall - neighbors have no leaves

My neighbors across the street have no leaf fall at all.

Nothing.

I have my own personal Fall! Sweet!!!!

Why is this happening, you ask?

I asked the same question.  It all has to do with a single type of tree.

You guessed it. My arch-nemesis...

The Black Walnut.

At first, I thought there was something wrong.

You do not, after all, expect to watch a steady fall of leaves in the summer.  That's crazy talk!  I figured the trees were suffering from some sort of disease.  Especially since no other trees around me were losing leaves.

After paying attention to other people's yards when walking to the grocery store or the farmers market, though, I noticed that this was occurring at various points throughout the neighborhood:

Points that had black walnut trees!

It appears that black walnut leaves fall earlier than usual.  If not, then there's some funky climate problem occurring here that especially zeroes in on the black walnut trees.

I'm guessing it's the former reason, rather than the latter.

What do you think?  Any alternate ideas on how I managed to get lucky enough to have fall... in summer?


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