The climate is just a bit warmer in the middle of the city, so fall colors last longer in Schenley Park than they do in the suburbs. Here we have an album of autumn leaves from the end of October.
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Autumn Leaves in Schenley Park
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A Yellow Wood
A late-autumn scene in Mount Lebanon: a babbling brook and thousands of yellow leaves from sugar maples.
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Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)
Many butterflies have colorful wings, but the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) has a body to match, as we can see in this close view. This is one of our most spectacularly beautiful butterflies, and one of our most common as well.
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The Gathering Storm
The Gathering Storm from Father Pitt on Vimeo.
Yesterday’s storm clouds as they gathered over Mount Lebanon. This video has no sound, and nothing happens in it except clouds moving. If, like old Pa Pitt, you find clouds fascinating, you might like it. The rest of you will be completely bored for just three seconds shy of a minute.
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Storm Clouds
Storm clouds are moving across the area, bringing welcome relief from the heat, but also lightning, strong winds, and power outages.
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Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)
A Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) visits the flowers of a Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii) in Beechview. If you like butterflies, a butterfly garden is easy to put together and beautiful in its own right. The Butterfly Bush is a good start; milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) and coneflowers (Echinacea spp.) will also bring crowds of butterflies.
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Babbling Brook
A moment of serenity by a babbling brook in Fox Chapel, swollen with spring rains.
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Waterfall in Fox Chapel
A stream tumbles down into a hollow in the woods in Fox Chapel. Spring rains have swollen all the streams and made delightful waterfalls everywhere,
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Spring is Here…
…and that, of course, means new flowers appearing over at Flora Pittsburghensis, such as this tiny but cheerful Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta).
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Hail
Hail the size of commercial ice cubes came down on parts of Pittsburgh this afternoon. (Hail of this size is most commonly compared to golf balls, but old Pa Pitt is not a golfer.) More than an hour and a half after it fell, this hailstone and many others were still sitting on the grass mocking the 50-degree weather.