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While we don't know the identity of the artist, the cover painting on Cornelius Weygandt's 1941 book,  November Rowen , captures many key elements of the current season quite well. It depicts a traveler emerging from a horse-drawn sleigh greeting friends and/or family in a landscape covered with snow. One of the book's themes is the importance of maintaining family and community connections. The long hard work of harvesting crops is over and there is more free time for visiting.  "The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow" The theme of traveling to visit is central to the song "Over the river and through the wood" published in 1844 and written by Lydia Maria Child.    The book's title "November Rowen" comes from a saying one of Weygandt's neighbors in Sandwich NH would repeat as if it were the refrain of a song: "There be no hay so sweet as November Rowen." Rowen is defined as a second harv...

a Astronomical Autumn began on Sept 22 this year. These photos were taken around that time to document the progress of this year's fall foliage.  The color began creeping in slowly around mid-September. It can start with a single leaf or a handful of leaves on an otherwise green tree. It seems to start in the swamps and stressed trees along the road.  Here you can see what I call a "bellwether" tree.  While this tree has almost entirely cloaked itself in its autumn attire, the rest of the trees in the photo have not even begun the process.  A wether is a castrated male sheep. The term "bellwether" refers to the dominant sheep fitted with a bell around its neck that leads the flock. The bell tells the shepherd where the flock is heading. The term then refers to something that helps predict where things are going. Notice that the tree above already has a good start on a fluffy bed of leaf drop to help facilitate our annual Snoopy and Charlie Brown rit...