Early Leaf Peeping

9/21/20 Northgate strip mall

My annual leaf-peeping tour has begun! The smoky air had kept me from walking in the neighborhood or even driving around much for nearly two weeks. When it finally cleared, I was surprised to find that many trees I see regularly had begun turning. Before the predicted rain settled in for the week, I thought I’d go see what else had turned. 

My first stop was the Greenwood neighborhood and my favorite traffic circle maples, which, two years ago, were already showing off color by mid-September. They were hardly showing any this week. (I must have missed them completely last year. . . I can’t find a sketch of them.) 

I decided to head up to Northgate instead, which has many lovely maples on the sidewalks and arterial divides, but they were all still mostly green. Then I remembered that they tend to turn much later in the season. A bit of color caught my eye in a strip mall parking lot, which I typically avoid as a sketch location – all those boring, boxy buildings and rows of cars that drive away as soon as I start sketching them! But as my friend Roy DeLeon has taught by example time and time again, it is the job of the sketcher, not the location, to make the sketch interesting. 

The season is young. I’m looking forward to mobile-studio sketching of fall color in the coming weeks. Since it’s something I do every year, not because of the pandemic, it will feel very normal. It’s important to seek normalcy wherever we can find it.