Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for October 22, 2020

Prime viewing is about 6 days

There is more colors in the mind’s memories.

Want proof? All the “colorful” wording when it came to Winter’s snow! Not good enough? All the vibrant colors of Spring! Yah… we forget the mud for a moment. And Summer has colors… but most of the time we can’t see them from sitting in front of the fan/air conditioner! ;)

I’ve fished at plenty of resorts where they were really biting last week.

If you bring that something special from the dispensary, you can see those wonderful colors any week.

Embrace the moment! Even the ones that involve sitting in a bus full of damp people driving through the rain to see leaves that have largely hit the ground. Or plan with better alternatives…

This time of year I go on a “Fall Colors Tour” every few days. Most people call it raking.

Out here in Nor Cal about the only color change we see is the Poison Oak leaves turning red.

I finally took note of some Japanese maples outside my house, that are now brilliant orange and red. Just realized they are opposite a corner and I don’t have a window that faces them. Paying attention, even belatedly, pays off.

I try to enjoy the colors on my drive to work. They are even better seen on a horse with hooves crunching the leaves.

I’m married to one of them. There is always some reason she wants a discount no one else receives. Embarrasses the heck out of our daughters and me.

Took a trip last week to see them but missed it. I’m thinking that this is just not a good year for the colors.

This time they should inquire about the possibility of an autumnatic price reduction.

We went from northern Maine to Albany, New York last week. Up in Maine, the colors were way past peak, but we saw beautiful foliage In southern Vermont and New York state as we went South.

Saw a gorgeous display last weekend in the mountains in Pennsylvania. Lower hillsides are coming on strong.

We noticed some real color in the trees this week, not in our yard of course. We have oaks – green → brown →drop, and firs which drop cones.

I get a lot of fall colors tours locally being that I don’t drive and haven’t been able to use Ubers/Lyfts or buses lately. I get a lot of cardio getting where I need to go.

I’m really glad there are masks on all the characters. Very responsible. Problem is, I can’t read the dialog from 6 feet away.

Saturday, Oct. 24, is United Nations Day, the 75th anniversary of the founding of the world’s foremost institution dedicated to peace, understanding, justice, health, nutrition, and human rights.

But today, Oct. 22, is a smaller anniversary, one that resonates with me on a personal level. It’s been 3 years since Non Sequitur published my favorite cartoon of all time. I bookmarked it then so I could refer to it often, and I’ve had many occasions since then to share it. I’m pleased to be able to do so once again:

https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2017/10/22

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

We’re lucky this year. In Colorado we sometimes get an early hard freeze that kills the green leaves so they just turn brown and drop. This year we got a freeze in September that killed the veggies but not enough to kill the leaves on the trees so we have some color. The native trees are just yellow. Not very exciting for those of us from back east. But there are now quite a few non-native trees around for more color, such as the red oak outside my window.

The leaves are gone here on the flatlands and now I can see the half demolished house across the street.

In SoCal, we don’t have Fall.

Those of us who live in states with lots of diffent topography are lucky. The higher you go in the mountains, the sooner the color appears then disappears so there’s lots of colors for many weeks. You can follow it if you want to every weekend. My trees won’t hit their full display until the first week in November although a surprising lot of trees are dumping their leaves early which is weird because we aren’t in drought conditions.

I grew up in a small town in Nebraska — an area of the country that didn’t have ‘native’ trees. In the early 1900s, my great grandfather planted many different trees in his yard, including one small-leaf sugar maple. It was on a corner of the yard, near a road that became a state highway. It was possibly the only sugar maple in the state for many, many years. People would drive by in the fall taking pictures and many would stop and ask if they could pick a leaf. In the late 1950s, the road was widened to put in sewage pipes. We kids had fun playing in the huge ‘tunnels’ all summer. But, our beautiful sugar maple tree got ‘asphalt poisoning’ and died.

A dedicated indoorsman, I wait for the fall colors to come to me.

Next: Get the rake.

The colors of the leaves in the fall are their natural colors. It’s the extra light in the summer that turns them green. If we had the kind of light we have now all year round, this planet would be awash in these beautiful colors!

In some places the colors are brighter than others. Houston is where the colors are duller.

Looking out my window I see prickly pear cactus, palo verdes, and mesquite. All a drab green that merges with the drab brown soil. In the Sonora desert it’s all drab until spring.

I went out to my car, on the street, parked under trees during a wind and rainstorm. I think it’s my car under all the leaves. Perhaps the leaves are pretty. Perhaps I don’t care.

At least they are wearing masks! Now bring back our girls!

Free time? google “mitch mcconnell hands”…I think that’s the 2nd stage of rigor mortis?

The leaves are beautiful in Michigan right now.