Last week as I was coming back home on Huffaker Road, something caught my eye on Lavender Mountain. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was. It looked like a light brown streak near the top of the ridge. Then I realized. It was trees with brown leaves.
Here’s a view from our front porch.
There is a patch of light brown at the left of the image along one ridge line; that’s like what I saw from Huffaker Road. The brown tree at lower right is a dogwood. The dogwoods have been turning brown for weeks. One of our neighbors was worried that it was the blight that has stricken dogwoods in the Pacific Northwest and on the East Coast. I was more inclined to think it was simply stress, because here in Northwest Georgia we are in extreme drought conditions. It may be a combination, since drought stress can make the trees more susceptible to things like the dogwood blight.
Now other types of trees are showing stress. The maples seem to be doing ok. A few are actually showing some color. Most of the hickories seem to be doing reasonably well, too. Various types of oak are not doing well. They don’t normally have much color in the fall before they lose their leaves, but these trees look more like they’re dying rather than just preparing for winter.
We had a fairly wet spring, but there has been no significant rain on the mountain for at least the two months we have been in our new house, and it has been hot. Nineties have been common. Atlanta is approaching the 1980 record for the number of ninety-degree days in a year.
Neighbor John has been preparing our driveway for paving. His heavy equipment has left a layer of powdery dust that puffs up around the dogs’ feet as they walk. It coats the cars, the side of the house, and us.
It looks like the only color we’ll have this fall is brown … brown leaves and brown dust.
Sure hope you get some rain there soon, although all that brown does sound like something else might be going on with those oak trees. Do you usually have a lot of fall color? We don’t get much color here, but a few trees do turn a gorgeous leaf red.
Robin — We do often have good color. The maples are usually brilliant red and orange, and some other trees are yellow. The oaks are usually pretty drab, even under the best of circumstances. Not brown like this, though. The picture at the top of the blog is, or used to be fairly normal.