Catching Up: Virginia Lakes, Santa Rosa, Piedmont

Holiday weekends always seem to delay posting observations.  That’s the case with these reports, submitted with apologies for their maturity.

Carolyn Webb reported from the Virginia Lakes Resort last week that color has been appearing increasingly along the Virginia Lakes Rd.

Above is a photo received on 9/8/17 to compare how the color has developed in the past 12 days. Since she took the original shot of quaking aspen (at left), more yellow has emerged and the rabbitbrush remain at full peak bloom.

Anirudh Natekar contributed shots of color found in Santa Rosa. Though, we assess it to be normal summer color. Some ornamental trees, like purple leaf plum, Japanese maple, American persimmon and Norway maple, provide beautiful maroon, purple and deep red color in summer. Even liquidambar can do so.

Though, the red or purple color is not the result of autumn. It’s just the tree’s normal color. Still, they do provide bloody good contrast to the greenness of summer.

Darrell Sano took an 8-mile “town walk” this past week from the BART station at Lake Merritt in Oakland up windy hilly roads through Piedmont.

The day was clear and sunny day, he reported, “a departure from the overcast ‘June Gloom’ that has plagued the Bay Area most of July and August, with below average temperatures and a thick marine fog blanketing the sky.  Darrell got a number of lovely images of what’s happening among the landscaped and native color of the East Bay, backlit with late summer light.  Darrell exudes, “There is nothing like fall light!… backlit fall colors simply glow vividly.”