Leaf Week

Leaf Week is now officially over, despite the fact that the leaves are just barely starting to turn in this part of the world. I decided to do leaves now rather than later because I wanted to end the week with a visit to the Eastern Sierra when the leaves were pretty.

We had the usual range of activities during the week. Perhaps the most successful was the first thing we did: walked around our house and yard and collected examples of all the leaves we could find. There were a surprising number, considering how little vegetation we have in our yard!

Art with leaves was OK. Painting with leaves didn't turn out too well...

but boos just ignored what I was trying to do and made lovely paintings unrelated to leaves. Leaf rubbings, on the other hand, were wonderful:

And of course we made leaf cookies, which were delicious.

 

Sometimes the best things that happen during homeschool preschool are completely unplanned. On Monday, as we finished collecting our leaves, Baby A suddenly looked up. "Mom!" he shouted. I looked up, expecting to see the usual fighter jet (an everyday occurrence around here), but instead it was an enormous flock of geese. Not Canada Geese either. And absolutely silent (maybe because they were so high up?). I ran inside for my camera, but they were moving fast, and by the time I got back, they'd almost vanished. I was frantically zooming in on the disappearing flock, but when I zoom I often lose what I'm trying to capture. Here's my one shot that caught one departing goose:

If you enlarge it, you might see the goose (in the lower lefthand corner). And here are the geese we probably saw:

Snow geese, and maybe Ross's Geese. Just gorgeous.

Anyway, back to leaves. Today we took the planned trip to the Eastern Sierra. I had read online (http://www.californiafallcolor.com/) that now was the time to go, but there sure wasn't much to see as we drove through the Owens Valley. But when we reached Bishop, we turned west and took Highway 168 up Bishop Creek toward Lake Sabrina. And there we did see some nice color. My photos aren't great because I was usually looking west into the gradually setting (or at least lowering) sun, but you can kind of get a sense of it.

Lots of other people had come to see the fall color too. So many people to see so few trees. It made me a bit homesick for Colorado, I have to admit. And of course, the first few years I was in Colorado, I was so homesick for Michigan, which has trees that turn COLORS OTHER THAN YELLOW. But you know, you make do with what you've got. The trees we saw today were lovely. And next year we'll be back in Colorado, where there will be even more lovely trees, and maybe someday -- who knows? -- I'll be back in Michigan in the fall.

Then we went back down to Bishop and played in the park for an hour.

Doesn't look much like fall, does it? Early days, yes, but it is here.