A Lingering Fall

I haven't been writing much, it's true, but this transition time is always difficult for me. I find it hard to restart my interest in doing posts about my southern Michigan life in the fall and doing the opposite in the spring, writing post about northern Michigan when I go north to Copper Harbor for the summer tourist season. The fall has been strangely (though the condition is certainly welcome) persistent for many weeks down here in Okemos and throughout mid-Michigan. The weather has been average, but the leaves have been hanging on the trees for a long, long time. Several trees in my yard are just now dropping their leaves, about 4 weeks later than usual. Here is a shot on the MSU campus from a couple weeks ago of a thicket of beech trees on the Circle, the center of the MSU campus and the site of its first buildings (it's known in some old books about the college as the Sacred Circle). These trees have been colorful for more than a month now.