Autumn is always a bitter-sweet season for me. I still remember it as the time school starts. When I was a child, I dreaded September, because I knew school was coming. Those feelings lingered through college, and they tinge my thoughts even now. Autumn also meant harvest with all its bounty: apples, grapes, corn, potatoes, and so on. How I’d love to help my grandfather pick them from his garden! Maybe I was just happy to get away from homework, but I loved it. His delicious Concord grapes, crisp from the vine, were just the ticket for me on a cold autumn day. My grandmother would beg me in vain to wash them as I wolfed them down in sheer delight. Ah, youth, it’s wasted on children…

Then there are the colors of autumn. Is there a season more colorful than it? Winter isn’t it. Spring may be colorful, but only so in concentrated spots, like gardens with flowers or flowering trees. It’s mostly brown and green and blue. Summer is constantly and mostly green and blue. Winter is just dull. It alternates between the brown of mud and the white of snow, bespeckled here and there with an occasional cardinal bird and some evergreens, to speak nothing of the mostly dreary sky. Now autumn, that’s the ticket for color! Where else will you find different colors everywhere, even in lowly trees you wouldn’t otherwise notice?

I’ve been taking photos of fall colors for a few years now. I probably got some of my best shots this year, and I wanted to share a few with you. Join me in saying goodbye to autumn. In memoriam…