And So it Begins

 

8/31/26 Green Lake sweet gums

Well, folks, there’s no denying it anymore: Fall is just around the corner. The Green Lake sweet gums say so.

These trees, by the way, are the ones I sketch most regularly in fall, sometimes more than once per season (this post from a few years ago includes a retrospective of many of them). In my early sketching years, I always stood right next to them, where I struggled to fit them in. (Back then, I was still calling them “maples”; I didn’t learn that they were sweet gums until quite a bit later.) More recently, I’ve been sketching them from across the lake, where their colors are a brilliant blur.

This week I stood where I could focus on the sweet gum at the head of the line, which consistently begins turning long before her sisters. The others are still mostly green.