After one year of posting photographs of my little Chinese Maple tree for the monthly feature The Changing Seasons, this is the final post. The above photo was not edited other than to crop, frame and watermark it.
My title “Deceptive December” intends to show how quickly the maple tree flamed into its Fall glory, then within just a few days, began to dry and go to seed before taking its winter rest. Just when I thought the beautiful fall colors would last a few weeks, winter storms moved in and blew most of the leaves off over a short period of time.
The colors of this tree should have reached their peak in mid-November, but because of exceptionally warm weather through Halloween, the maple’s colors peaked right after Thanksgiving.
Here is a gallery of the maple in various stages just in the first few days during the month of December.
Participating in this photography challenge was fun and interesting. When I decided on a whim to photograph my own maple tree, I learned I had to be very creative with the photos since many of them looked EXACTLY the same. As a blogger, I came up with different angles and stories to capture the changes not always evident.
I also learned that my Samsung android phone takes dang good pictures!
In January I showed a naked tree shrouded in fog. By April, the maple was in full leaf and lasted that way, lush and green, until late September when it began to show the stress of the dryness of the fourth year of the drought in California. By October and November, subtle evidence of autumn was in the leaves.
Here is the gallery of the entire year!
I hope you enjoyed the year of the tree and its journey through the seasons.
This feature was brought to us by Cardinal Guzman. Please visit his blog for his final wrap up and his spectacular photos.
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