The tree that signals the end of summer for @parul2411’s #ThursdayTreeLove

1. This shot, even with the fancy PicMonkey filters, doesn't do justice to the pop of color this tree has in this sea of green.
 
 
2. More filters and a different angle help a bit, but it's much more dramatic in person. I think I need to plan to work on my fall foliage skills this autumn. Oh, and I didn't crop out the top of the side mirror with the little bit of my wrist showing because I thought it made for kind of a cool way to show where I was when I took the shot.
 
 
3. Funny thing is, for many years I've always assumed this was a Red Maple tree, because of the shape of the leaves, as well as the fact it turns bright red so early in the season. Made enough sense to my brain that I never bothered to confirm.
 
 
4. But after a little bit of Googling...
 
 
5. I discovered that this is actually a Sugar Maple Tree!
 
 
6. The difference between the two, according to Northern Woodlands Mission (an educational nonprofit located here in New Hampshire), is "The leaf margins tell the main story: sugar maples have smooth edges while red maples are toothed or serrated."
 
 
7. There are lots of other ways to tell the difference between the two (be sure to take a gander at the original article for more of them), but that sentence alone confirmed it for me. And I'm thinking in about another week or so, this will be entirely red, without any hints of green.
 
 
8. Even though I'm complaining that summer is almost over already, I never get tired of seeing this beautiful combo of red and green, light and shadow.
 
 
9. I didn't realize until editing this shot that you can see the "helicopters" or seed pods almost ready to fly off the sugar maple branches.
 
 
9a. Here's a zoomed in & cropped bit of the previous picture to show what I mean - I've always known these as "helicopters" or sometimes "whirlybirds" but according to the Farmers' Almanac article, When Will You See Maple ‘Copters Flying? -
"First, the technical term for this winged seed is samara, which refers to a specialized fruit that is designed to travel long distances from the parent tree. Some ash and elm trees also produce samaras, although the maple’s samaras are the very best at flying."
 
 
10. The FA article has lots of other cool bits of info, so I definitely recommend checking it out. And in this shot, you can see more of the helicopters getting ready to fly in the upper right corner...
 
 
11. ... along with this rather striking shadow. Is it just me, or does this look like a young girl and boy, sitting face to face high up in the tree?
 
 
12. Maybe it was the heat causing this optical "delusion"...lol! Regardless, I like to think I caught a couple of young fairy folk planning some magical shenanigans while the warm weather is still here to enjoy. And according to the calendar, there are only 27 more days until the official first day of fall.

EDITED TO ADD: In chatting with @ninahaskin in the comment section on Hive, I remembered that I completely spaced mentioning in my post that the best thing about those copters, besides throwing them back up in the air and watching them spin back down, was to split the green seed at the end in half, and sticking it to the tip of your nose! Like this (and yes, there's a reddit for that)! 🤣

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