Pumpkin view

Autumn arrives tomorrow at 4:04 p.m., and with the new fall season undoubtedly will come the semi-annual invasion of stink bugs. How large an army of the brown marmorated pests remains to be seen, although their field scouts have already arrived.

On a brighter note, the fall foliage season is likely to be quite colorful in Rappahannock County.

The leaf color forecast is “excellent” for the Allegheny Mountain Range to the west and north and “fair” to middlin for the southern Appalachians from the Carolinas to Georgia. Which puts Rappahannock County smack in the middle of the predictions, which are impacted each season by temperatures and precipitation amounts recorded as far back as the previous winter, through the spring and summer, and even into early fall (the warmer and wetter the September, for example, the less vivid the leaf color).

Leaves in Rappahannock peak on average each year between Oct. 15-25, depending on elevation. Skyline Drive, as we speak, already has some trees and plants revealing dazzling autumn shades, although it’s still early in the game. Fortunately, Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, top to bottom, have one of the longest leafpeeping seasons in the entire nation, lasting over a month.

The best way to determine the peak of any fall foliage season, of course, is by lacing up your tennis shoes or hiking boots, stepping outdoors, and discovering for yourself. And around these parts, one needn’t venture far. As American essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau noted, he absorbed autumn by simply sitting on a pumpkin, where he found he could “have it all to myself.”