What central Alabama looks like

[olmue]

By FAR the first thing you notice (if you're me, anyway, coming from tree-starved northern plains) is the TREES. They are so huge! So beautiful! It's obviously not with my ears, but I swear I can hear them somehow. It just FEELS different here. The trees are ginormous, too. Everywhere you look, there are 100-foot pines. (Pictured.) Also sweetgum. (

Comments

[robinellen]

Amazing. Do the trees change for the fall? That would be something to see...still, really beautiful. (My gramma -- the one who's 98.75 -- used to pick cotton to earn extra money for shoes...or I should say, she tried it one fall and decided it was so horrible she'd rather go shoeless.)

[olmue]

It sounds like in times past, cotton picking may have been a thing like spud harvest or corn detasseling, where they hire out to school kids to help with. Grueling, but good pay. However, I can also see why someone might want to never ever do it again...

As to leaves, yes, there are a fair amount that change color, but so far the leaves haven't seemed as clear as in other places--I don't know if there are leaf illnesses in the trees near me, or if it has to do with the way the weather turns very slowly, but a lot of the leaves I've seen are part colored, part brown (or colored with brown spots). Tulip trees go yellow, and of course sweetgum are all different colors on the same tree. Lots of oak too, though, and they just turn brown and fall off. Still, it's a lot better than when we lived in Charleston! The leaves don't change at all there; they stay green all winter and only fall off in the spring when they get new ones.

[olmue]

Actually, I think that the leaves have only just started turning, and we may get more as we go along. I'm still figuring out the seasons here. It feels like spring/summer, even though the sun is setting earlier all the time.

[fabulousfrock]

Yes, I think you are definitely not "there" yet for leaves. I feel like in Florida they changed in maybe late November...

The woods are so pretty. That must be a balm to the soul although...the football thing is weird!

[barbarabaker]

I've never seen cotton growing, or kudzu. But I love any kind of pine tree. Those tree photos are all lovely. I'll bet it smells good in the woods, too.

[olmue]

It smells sooooo good! I marvel every time I step outside. There are flowers out there, too, and wow, it's a change from North Dakota. We liked the people, but we lived near a sugar refinery, which smells exactly like roadkill, and in the summer, there was sticky aphid "honeydew" (read: poop) that got on everything and then fermented in the heat. :P But here, you step outside and are washed with this clean pine smell, with flowers. It's nice. :)