I just had to stop on the way home from work again because now all the leaves on this tree have turned golden, so I'll substitute this picture for the one I posted last week.

This was taken along the frontage road that parallels the interstate at the lowest spot in the Santa Fe valley, about 6,700 ft elevation. I watch this tree every year and have taken some of my best fall photos of it. A couple of years ago a picture of this tree ended up on the cover of the Santa Fe Budget public document. Fall is still kind and warm to us, with cool mornings.

Another pristine Fall weekend. The colors are on the trees in Albuquerque, though this could be the last weekend. I saw this tree on the way home from Church, so Marolynn and I walked over to it and took some pictures. The red maple tree in our back yard hasn't even begun to turn yet, but it usually turns red and drops all of its leaves in the space of a week -- probably after the next hard frost.

The full-time missionaries were our guests last evening. The weather has continued to hold up and provide us with fine early evenings. Next to Paul is Elder Messman who is returning home to San Jose at the end of the month. His companion is Elder Uta'i, a native of Samoa, who has been here about 4 months. Elder Uta'i has learned English from scratch fairly passably and gave a talk at Church last week and stood at the pulpit at today's Testimony meeting. We did a Google-Earth on the computer with him to take a look at his homeland. He said 'I don't live right in Apia, but along that road in the country' as we viewed the computer screen. It never cools to less than 70 degrees in Samoa, so what is fair fall weather to us seems cold to him. So we gave him a quilt and afghan for his bed.

Cold weather and a near-frost reached Albuquerque this morning, and we almost let these tomatoes go to ground. I had forgotten that I bought a package of seeds for orange tomatoes, and the bush behind was loaded with them, with Marolynn waiting to pick them till they "ripened" into red tomatoes. I remembered what I had done and we got these orange tomatoes inside to eat. They're very sweet, really a nice fruit. The weather will warm up and hang on for another week or so and then we'll have to pick all the tomatoes, green, orange, or red to save them from the real frosts to come.

The fall leaves in the mountains above Santa Fe were at their peak in the middle of the week, so at lunchtime on Thursday, I scribbled "photo-op" by my name on the staff in-out board and made the trip up. The fall scenery starts only about a half-hour away from the office door, so I was able to hike around a bit and take a few pictures. The cold moved in this weekend for a hard freeze in the mountains, so the leaves will disappear fast.