BeautiFall

Fall was truly gorgeous this year. There wasn't an early frost, and couple that with the hot temperatures that lasted until the end of October, the trees were full of vibrant, vivid colors all month long. I was constantly in awe all of September and October at the abundant natural beauty all around me. I tried to capture some of these images during moments that my eyes beheld them and my heart appreciated them, but unfortunately that meant that I was taking pictures on the spot, and thus I had only my cell phone on hand instead of my camera, so the quality of the photos aren't near as good as they truly were in real sight. 

September 20.
On this afternoon, I was basking in the glory
of the sun's rays and couldn't believe how
GREEN everything still was.  

September 30
Josh took this photo while working at the golf
course. The moon was a stark contrast against
the bright blue sky and full green trees. 

October 16
I looked out the window on this morning, and just
loved the sight of this tree glistening in the sun!

October 16
This tree across the field from our house usually  turns
brown early because of the first frost. I never remember
seeing it such a bright yellow before. It was so beautiful!

October 16
The smaller trees (on the left) in Ed & Kathy's yard turned orange, yellow, and red
LONG before the giant Oak tree (on the right) did. It surprisingly stayed green
until about Halloween, which is a rarity for it to last that long!

October 21
Every afternoon I parked under this tree
at my job. I loved watching it change on
a daily basis. It was so colorful!

October 26
This is the same tree 5 days later.
The red was so bold, and the green
was almost gone by this point.

October 21
Josh took this photo at the golf course. It was a gorgeous day, with green
on the grass, yellow on the trees, blue in the sky, and white in the mountains.

October 22
This was my favorite tree to pass on the way
home from work every day. It was in the yard
of a house along the highway, and it had THE
reddest leaves I spotted all season long. I
stopped at the house on the way home one day
to take this photo (much to the boys' dismay),
but I hate that you can't tell just how bright
red the leaves were from the quality of this pic. 

October 24
Because it was so unusually warm for so long, I got tired of watering the flowers,
and gave up mid-October. It didn't matter, though; the flowers were still going
strong until the first freeze in November, which finally stopped their growth.

We had two leaf clean-up days this fall: the first one on October 24, and the last one on November 14. The boys were happy to FINALLY be done mowing the lawn, but leaf clean-up days are actually a lot harder manually and take longer time than mowing. Josh mows the lawns (ours and Grandma's) with a riding mower that has collection bags, and when the bags are full, he dumps them into wheelbarrows. The boys then haul the wheelbarrows over to the pumpkin patch where they spread the leaves over the ground (they are used as a compost and later rototilled into the dirt), then they return back to the yard to repeat the procedure over and over again. When the Oak tree's leaves fall, though, they are too far too numerous and huge to mow over, so the boys rake them into piles, and then they move the piles to a trailer to be transported to the pumpkin patch that way instead. It's a laborious, time-consuming task to clean up the yards in the fall, but due to experience, it's a job the boys have become very good at completing (and they make sure to always includes some leaf-jumping and leaf-throwing to make the task more fun, too)! 

November 14