Natural beauty is the most pleasing to my eye! Lovely landscape photos, Deanna and NHBabs.

Sped, I thought of you and your garden when I saw the meadow. Natural beauty is truly stunning. Those ferns get me every time, too. Love how the light hits them just right.

NHBabs, we are indeed lucky. I need a chauffeur so i can look out the window more.

Right now I'm really enjoying my New Favorite Tree, the striped maples. I'm interested in canopy trees, and this year for the first time I'm noticing their huge lemon/creamy yellow leaves (and they are HUGE leaves) and how they make the understory so mesmerizing.

Trees were dancing in the wind this morning, and my quaking aspens were quaking!

Awesome! I had never seen them quake, but they really do. Your trees are taller than I imagined. Beautiful!

Lovely Sped! I really enjoy aspens. We have quite a few along field margins and wetland edges. DH, who grew up here, refers to them as 'popples' which is an old local term that I never heard growing up in the midwest.

NHBabs, that's interesting. I always thought that "popple" was a lumber term. At the plywood mill where I used to work, wood from any member of the poplar family (which includes aspens) was called "popple." It might be specific to areas of the country where forestry is an industry, because I know there is a Popple River in Wisconsin.

Funny thing about "popple" is that many people are allergic to it. I had a number of co-workers who would break out in serious hives if they handled it. For some, just wearing long gloves was enough, but others had to switch to a different department if we were running popple on the dryer or glue roll or saw that night.

We took the fur kids and ourselves for a walk in the national forest this afternoon and for once I brought a camera. We are so fortunate to live just 10 minutes away from this preserve that runs up the middle of the state. This ridge of the Green Mountains (aka a northern section of the Appalachian range) is sprinkled with orange now. It's not the best year for foliage, but pretty anyway.

These two shots are of Black Branch Creek and the wetlands surrounding it. It is one of my favorite spots. Add a few ducks and it could be the live version of one of my grandfather's many wildlife paintings.

Interesting about the term popple, Sped. DH did work for a bit in a lumber mill in his younger days, so maybe that's where he picked up the term. Or perhaps from one of the neighbors who cut timber. I will have to ask him.

I particularly like the last of your most recent photos!

I like the last two, too. Beautiful wetlands!

We spent a few days in Maine (York) and while there we drove down to Salisbury MA to revisit our old stomping grounds on a day pass. (We used to stay at the S. Reservation with our camper.) I had forgotten how beautiful that area is. A view of the great salt marsh.

The images (below) are straying from the topic of gardens, but they *are* New England landscape (well seascape at least) pictures of one of my favorite "magical" places, immense beauty combined with a hint of danger (danger from the powerful riptides where the Merrimack River meets the Atlantic just out of sight in this picture and from the sharp drop-off to over-your-head water at high tide and massive waves). Across the river on the right in the photo, that spit of land is Plum Island.

I've always found this slowly disintegrating metal sea wall (between the rock jetty and the piece of driftwood) fascinating. It looks like the spine of a gigantic sea creature.

The last time we saw the sea wall it was taller, so it has either become partially buried in the sand or else eaten away by salt water currents, or maybe some of both. This picture was of our 2 dogs posing in front of the wall back in the early 90's when we were camping there. And on this last entirely OT photo I'll end this post!