Days of Autumn : 7 Honey locust

We have a clump of these in one corner on our backyard,
One day they were green, then almost overnight turned yellow!

Such a deep blue. . . love it!

My neighbors house makes a nice navy-blue background. =)

One of the other trees has only gone a little yellow . . .

I really like this one, how the leaves change from yellow to green . . .

                   ~Jenny

Days of Autumn : 4 Yellow tree

Yes, I do very much like the trees that turn red, but lets not forget the golden, buttery yellow ones either!

 I've wanted for years to photograph these trees, but there aren't any in my immediate neighborhood . . . so it never happened. =(
Then I rode my bike around the other day and finally did!  =D
It was totally worth it.

Yellow and light blue just go sooo well together!

The black stems weave in and out of the leaves . . .

Hey look! It's a squirrel!
This guy was playing hide-and seek with me, dipping in and out of the shadows on the trunk.  =D

The nice thing about squirrels is that they often just freeze, hoping they blend in with the trunk, so the photographer can get a clear picture!

 
And this is our Service Berry tree, which usually turns red/orange but this year it went "blonde".

            So which do you like best, Red trees or Yellow?

(Personally, I find it very hard to play favorites in these matters!)

~Jenny

Days of Autumn : 1

I keep seeing all these pretty trees when we're driving around, so, camera over my shoulder and helmet on head, I rode my bike around the neighborhood and "shot" a bunch of trees.
I got some pictures I'm very happy with and had a splendiferous time. 50 pictures of Oaks, Ash, Honey locust, and Maple though, are perhaps a few too many for one post, so I broke it up into a couple posts.

I was thinking, with the long drought and all this summer, that the trees wouldn't be very pretty . . . instead . . . . it's like the rainbow after the flood! Brilliant colors and even some of the trees that don't usually turn colors did, the Pin oaks for instance, usually turn orangey brown and fall off. Some of them are almost as red as the Maples this year!

First I present . . . the burnt trees! Also known as Ash trees. =P
Red on the outside and Yella on the inside.

Then the Pear trees, which almost look like a rainbow sometimes, starting with Purple at the top, fading into Reds, and Pinks, a little Green mixed in and then Yellow and Orange.
Pretty cool.

Lastly, the rest of the Viburnum turned totally ruby.

                From blustery Kansas,
  
                                                      ~Jenny

More Sunflowers!

Yep, just couldn't leave it at one post when I have so many pictures of these bright, golden, sunny flowers.

I took these a little later in the day, hence the very dramatic backlighting, which is the real key to all these pictures, they wouldn't have been half so interesting if they were taken, say, at midday in the shade.

I started out with this:

    And went on to compose, edit and scrunch down to get these:

 

THIS . . . Is the most be-pollened bee I think I've ever seen! I bet his friends have trouble recognising him through it all!

You remeber that awesome, gigantic sunflower I told you about yesterday? Well, sadly, I'm afraid it got a little too tall for it's own good, became the Leaning Stalk of Sunflower and is now the shortest of the sunflowers . . . though still the longest. =)

  The shadows on the leaves are neat . . .

  The view along the stalk is pretty neat too.

                    From the Sunflower state,
           
                                                                ~Jenny