Summer is gone - Greene County, Virginia 

My wife and I drove across the mountain yesterday in a light rain. Autumn arrived last week not in a blaze of color, but in a blaze of record breaking heat. Yesterday, that changed abruptly with temperatures topping out in the mid sixties. Fall was in the air.

The poplar and sycamore trees are dotted with brilliant yellow leaves, which glow against the rain-darkened trunks in the woods like a pointillist painting. Higher up in the mountains, maple trees are starting to turn red. Oak trees, less showy than maples, will turn color in the coming weeks. It is the oak's persistent leaves that will provide the last traces of  Autumn color before Winter arrives.

Overnight, the rain became a steady downpour. The long summer is over.