Images of Autumn

Note: I originally published this post on The Sparrow Tree Square Blog on October 24, 2012. It is one of a handful of Sparrow Tree Square posts that I'm moving over here, where they better fit.

It's been beautiful fall weather where I live lately, and I thought I'd share some picture from around town of the flowers and foliage.

My town's local park has been pretty this month, with the leaves on the trees just starting to change:

The sky was so bright and the colors so vibrant on this particular afternoon that I was reminded of Helen Hunt Jackson's poem "October's Bright Blue Weather."

My town has also been getting into a bit of autumnal gardening. We're a seaside town, so outside of the park there's a town lifeboat that has been converted to a planter. It's got a couple of evergreen shrubs that are there all year round, and then the rest of it and the bed around it are planted with seasonal flowers in spring, summer, and fall. This fall they've done a mix of mums and pansies:

As you can see, their mums are looking gorgeous. I suspect that they're actually in pots and get swapped out when one dies--I've noticed a a couple of times ones that were all faded were suspiciously bright and bloom-ful a day or so later. They've also gone with the more traditionally springlike purple pansies, but I think that the purple works well here since all of the mums are bright, warm autumnal colors.