Late-Season South Shore Foliage

We did a few Foliage trips around the South Shore last week.

"South Shore" is sort of an indiscriminate term, as places like Middleboro and Wareham really shouldn't count, but we didn't get Fall Riverish enough to call it a South Coast/South Shore crossover.

That fact doesn't really matter much- especially in an article about leafs on a tree- but it matters a lot to the people who it matters to.

We try to keep moving when we work...

Sometimes we shoot out the window. Worry not, the driver isn't shooting. He drives, the passenger spots and shoots. The driver determines the general direction that we go, while the spotter is in charge of when we stop. 

Maybe you work differently... or maybe I'm too lazy to crop the dashboard out of this pic, and decided to joke around it. 

We let our daily business dictate our photo work a lot, so we sort of ran a Wareham-Carver-Plymouth-Kingston-Duxbury back down to Bourne route.

We've been meaning to do Cape Cod, as we veteran leaf peepers feel that Cape Cod doesn't peak before November. Unfortunately, the Cranberry Chevy has been running poorly recently, it's an expensive fix, and we may have to be Innovative. We may even have a contest.

I'll worry about that later, as it is very late at night and I have pictures to share with you.

I like writing in the middle of the night. The night helps me focus. 

I'm pretty sure that I waltzed out of Duxbury High School in the 1980s just a few years before stuff like Asperger Syndrome and ADHD became the go-to diagnosis model for American school psychologists. If I was a 1970s birth, I'd be full of Ritalin and asleep right now.

I tend to be distracted during the day. Even in the relative isolation that I managed to carve out for myself, stuff- people walking around, approaching vehicles, the discharge of a rife now and then- happens on my street that I have to pay attention to.

That's not the case during the Witching Hour. The darkness obscures all visual distractions, reducing me to Tyrannosaurus Rex-style motion detector status. Anything moving around in my yard at this hour is most likely something that I might have to kill, probably with my hands (I support America's gun rights 101%, but I'm a bit too clutzy/nutty to responsibly own a firearm myself). That sort of tension adds a nice edge to my work.

Hey, you try writing about leaves... 

I've said it before, but Southeastern Massachusetts is tough for shooting Foliage. We lack the elevated spots that you get in places like New Hampshire, where you get those sweeping mountain valley views that you see in the calendars. We sometimes have to leave some dude's truck in the picture.

I'd shoot off of the Bourne or Sagamore Bridge, but that area is cursed with scrub pine. You get a greenish/orangey/semi-brown mix shooting from up there, sort of a bronzed Aquaman.

I have plans for that region, which we will get to in a future article.

Our responsibility runs out at the Rhode Island border. We love Rhodey. We're just a Massachusetts thing.

Even then, we stick to the Eastern part of the state. It simplifies things. 

Shoot, we could give you Colorado pictures if you want, but I don't think that they grow cranberries out there.

It's best if we stay in Massachusetts.

We do have good foliage down here. It's more of a rural driving expedition thing than a hiking thing, although you can see some nice Leaf if you go deep in the forest. You even get Early Peak in the areas of the forest where the sun doesn't shine that brightly.

We'd also recommend using an online map service to plan your trip. You can work a few lakes into your route (we didn't do so on this trip, but you can), and be sure to keep it Rural.

Orange was the hardest color for us to find. Various shades of red are everywhere, with a slow fade to brown taking over as the Fall part of autumn starts to assert herself. Yellow is second easiest, and orange is the hardest.

I see Blue in some Vermont photos, but I'm not a savvy enough Leafpeeper to know what trees do that or why we don't have them here.

We'll try to expand our reach into the northern states next year.  We got to Maine in September, but it was pre-peak. After that, we were lucky to get out of Plymouth County. Busy month,,,

We do perform an important service here. We get it out on the Internet that southeastern Massachusetts, and especially Cape Cod, still has peak foliage.

If you live in or are visiting New England, it is quite simply Too Damn Late for you to see peak foliage unless you get your bad self down to southeastern Massachusetts. You could go to Vermont, but it's brown and desolate up there... and everyone smells like syrup.

We don't want you to have to go through all that, when you can dip an hour or two south of Boston and see perfect late-season fall foliage.

Even with our best efforts, we tend to be more Suburban than Rural. This is why we have to zoom in on tress so closely,when panning back or whatever they call that may be more what the shot calls for.

It also gives us the Flood o' Color that we love so much. It is very colorful down here. I didn't have to edit these shots at all, which wasn't the case with our previous foliage work. 

This is good, because my mouse has no Right Click button now. Not being able to scoot down to Radio Shack is one of the downsides of working the Werewolf Shift, but it is a condition that I tolerate.

I swear that, when I went to the other side of the tree to shoot it without the guy/s house in the background, the color wasn't as satisfying. Therefore, he suffers so that you can zone out on some Reds.

If homeboy objects we'll remove the picture or crop his house out of it or something.

We like our readers to be happy. Sure, we'll fight with them on Facebook now and then, but it's all in good fun.

I tried and failed to frame the Myles Standish Monument between two trees with my cheapo Wal-Mart camera that was last seen being hit directly by a wave during our nor'easter coverage a few weeks ago.

I could have zoomed in more, but it might have made the picture blurry.

I am very much a photographer of the Take Fifty To Use Ten variety.

We have two or three more articles on Foliage coming up

1) A piece where we discuss lining the Cape Cod Canal with foliage-friendly trees in a crazed attempt to make it a 2075 AD tourist attraction.

2) A contest where we troll Facebook for people to take Cape Cod foliage pics which we will publish. A cheapo prize will go to the winner.

3) The article with the results of the contest.

We loved this month, because the nor'easter didn't kill the foliage. It did damage, but it didn't bring about a premature end of the season.

Check this tree below, which lost her leaves directly under her. Raking the yard under this tree is a breeze...

... unless, of course, there's a breeze!

Peep ya later!