Take Time to Enjoy the View

A brilliant blaze of red, orange and yellow fills our views this time of year, but have you ever wondered what trees combine to create your favorite fall foliage?

Here is a key to their colors:

 

Red Leaves:

  Some Maples

  Some Oaks (red, pin, scarlet and black)

  Some Sweetgum

  Dogwood

  Persimmon

  Sassafras

 

Yellow and Orange Leaves:

  Hickory

  Ash

  Some Maples

  Tulip trees

  Some Oaks (white, chestnut, bear)

  Beech

  Birch

  Sycamore

 

It’s a great time of year to put on some hiking boots and explore the trails at Engelmann Woods, Weldon Spring, Rockwoods, or Little Lost Creek Conservation Areas.

If you prefer to view the fall foliage from the comfort of your car window, there are scenic vistas just a short drive from St. Louis including:

·        I-55 south to Mastodon State Historic Site

·        Highway 30 southwest to Little Indian Creek Conservation Area

·        I-70 to Reifsnider State Forest, or

·        North on Highway 61 to Logan Conservation Area.

 

Enjoy the view!

Missy

Skip the Carving: 10 Pumpkin Decorating Alternatives

           As Halloween draws near, our little pumpkins are begging to carve all those pumpkins we all have perched on our porches. 

But let’s be real….pumpkin carving, while traditional, is a torturous mess to clean up. Those eewey, gooey insides with their stringy, clingy fibers and slimy seeds will inevitably end up dried up and plastered to your counters and table tops.

If you’d rather spend your time decorating pumpkins than cleaning up pumpkin guts, here are Ten Alternatives Pumpkin Decorating Ideas:

1.    Use some spooky stickers

2.    Draw a face with markers and glue yarn on the top for hair

3.    Paint your pumpkin

4.    Brush a mixture of glue & water on your pumpkin and then sprinkle it with glitter to create a sparkly coating

5.    Poke pipe cleaners into your pumpkin and bend them into fun shapes to create spider legs or bat wings for the sides or pointy devil horns for the on the top.

6.    Use thumb tacks to create designs on your pumpkin

7.    Bling it out using by gluing on sequins and rhinestones

8.    Cover your pumpkin in paper mache strips to make it look like a mummy.

9.    For smaller pumpkins, try wrapping yarn, in autumn colors, round and round them to make it look like a ball of yarn

10.  Choose some pretty leaves from your yard and create a collage of them on your pumpkin using Mod Podge

Here’s to a happy, less messy, Halloween.

Missy