Finding Fall Where There Isn't Any

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Capture the changing seasons with a shot of the fall foliage near you.


When I first read this, I thought there was no way I could do the fall foliage thing. This is Tucson, Arizona, after all. We don't have fall. Tucson's seasons are as follows:

• Nice and Rainy
• Nice
• Hot
• Very Hot
• Monsoon
• Hot
• Nice

We're hovering somewhere between Hot and Nice right now. The high today was 87, and it rained. This kind of climate is not conducive to leaves changing color.

But John Scalzi, bless him, gave us an out:

In a part of the country where the leaves don't change? Snap something else that says "fall" to you.

What says autumn better than a nice pumpkin? Hey, I can even add an apple to that. An apple is a fall fruit!

Lame. Cliché and lame.

Okay, how about a classroom bulletin board? Nothing says fall like kids back in school!



Except that classes began in August here.

Okay, how about fake leaves? Here's a nice, minimalist display of autumn decor.



Eventually I remembered that I've actually seen a few trees change color here, on Broadway east of Swan. I don't think they drop their leaves, but they do turn kind of yellowish. A few even turn kind of orange.




This was after work, though, the sun had just set, and my camera battery needed charging. Nevertheless, I pulled into the parking lot of TGI Friday on Broadway and snapped photos of the most colorful leaves I could find. These were either Sycamore or Cottonwood trees, or maybe Arizona Live Oak. Yeah, that sounds more likely.

Look! A real fallen fall leaf! That's a rarity here, believe me!

A haiku I wrote in college went something like this:

Leaf falls to the ground
Like a sad revelation.
Winter coming soon.

But we don't get winter here. Oh, it snows about once every three years, for about five minutes, but that hardly counts as winter. No, we get "Rainy and Nice." But that's why John and I live in Arizona, isn't it?




As we've seen, most signs of changing seasons here are either faked or imported. This pumpkin vendor sets up every year near Broadway and Rosemont, but I'm pretty sure his wares are trucked in from out of state, or at least another county. Come Thanksgiving, the same folks will be selling Christmas trees on the same spot. They also sell strings of red chilis, which are a staple of seasonal decor in Arizona.



The dusk came on strong as I headed for home. The full Harvest moon was rising, huge and orange, the top three quarters of it hidden behind the lingering clouds. But as I went down Craycroft, I saw the most colorful leaves of the evening. I doubled back, hopped onto an access road, and grabbed the shot for you.

Here's a hint for winter: please don't ask me for a snowman photo! He'll do it, too. Just you wait.

Karen