The First Leaves of Autumn?!

I could not believe my eyes yesterday...

We were doing rig check and I looked out of the bay toward the trees lining the walk going into Volunteers Park along the road. The trees there are young, and they have a habit of turning colour quite a bit earlier than the other trees. That would be nearly all of the other trees! What turns this early in New Jersey? As north as we are, we are not in Nanook of the North territory! We are midway between the equator and the pole, so a staggering distance north we are not.

Anyway, I looked out of the bay and in one small tree, right in the middle toward the east, there were just a handful of leaves that were no longer green, but the richer colours of yellow, orange and red. Red? Orange? Even yellow is a strange thing to see in mid-August. There are a few leaves here and there spotted about that are yellow. A couple of single leaves in the apple tree in back are yellow, but it might be a handful in total. But to see the red? Hmmmm...

I love it, but this is clearly too early to see a brilliant, fiery red that one should only see in late September through October. Still... it does help with the August blues!