The time is coming for Fall brilliance:  bright colors to absorb and savor and internalize within our bings.  It's nature's way of moving us from the soothing green of summer leaves to the browns and greys and less frequent greens of winter. 

 I do love trees. My favorite most relaxing time is spent out in the woods with trees.  Here's a giant who has lived along Old John's River Road, one of the oldest entry points into the High Country.  This tree is as old, perhaps older, than the road has existed.

Someone asked me if this was a painting, but, not, it's a picture of reeds that grow along the banks of Trout Lake, near mp 294 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, in Cone Park.  I often photograph them as they change character, always charming, in an ever transforming tableau from Spring through Fall.  

'Hebron Colony Falls' is, to me, a happenstance name inappropriate to the beauty of this treat.  Reach it via an off shoot of Boone Fork Trail, about a mile from paring in Price Park Picnic area. 

These trees are much photographed.  They are easy to get to, on the Parkway where Green Hill Road intersects.  I call them 'Brother Trees' because another sest of trees I shoot I call 'Sister Trees.'  This Fall, at this time one had shed its leaves but the other had not.  I hadn't noticed that on site while shooting them, in my ...

The Fall painted trees are a mirror image in Trout Lake.  Do you see the tiny hidden jewel in this photo?  Hidden among the rushes:  the full moon about to set.