This is our favorite season, the hot, sticky days of Summer have been packed away -- and the icy months of Winter are still far on the horizon. Sweater weather. Years ago, when I was in PS 60, we took a field trip to Forest Park to collect leaves. Then we had to glue them to a piece of oak tag. I remember sitting at our kitchen table, my Dad showing me how to glue a little touch of glitter to the edges of the leaves, to give it a nice look.
Forest Park is beautiful this time of year, just as the leaves start to change. We'll try to make it up there a few more times -- and catch it just after the trees turn yellow and orange and before the rest of the leaves come down. Timing is everything :-)
Today we visit the path / steps at Forest Parkway and Park Lane South. We looked at this area once before, you can read that report here. In that report we identified a spot near the top as one of our favorites in Woodhaven. Here's what we said back in July:
"If you get a chance, pick a nice day and sit down on these steps for 30 minutes or so. First of all, you'll have a view of big, tall, straight trees -- and as you look up and around you'll realize you are in a "cave" made of leaves. And if you get a good breeze, the "walls" of this cave will move and make noise -- it's quite an experience! Today, there was a good breeze and we couldn't believe how loud the leaves were."
So we returned to that spot -- this was on Saturday (Halloween). And we followed our own advice (many people talk to themselves, but how many of them actually listen?) and sat on the steps and enjoyed the show.
Even though it looks like there are a ton of leaves on the ground -- it's just a mere fraction of the leaves that are still on the trees. There are still a lot of green leaves on the trees that will be there for a few more weeks. But with each passing day, with each gust of wind, as the leaves begin to age and die, they will fall in greater and greater numbers.
Here's our video from that afternoon in the park. Please note, that very little happens in this video -- just sit back and enjoy the sounds of the trees. At times, you'll hear the wind kick into high gear and it'll get very loud. And if you listen very carefully, you may hear the train on Jamaica Avenue, or you may hear a plane flying overhead. We say "may" because the noise from the leaves blocks out almost everything else. This is one of our favorite videos of Woodhaven:
That's nice and relaxing, isn't it? It's a nice spot to sit and enjoy the park -- and there's plenty of seating! Here's the view from that spot.
And this lovely picture of Fall in Forest Park is the basis for our very first Project Woodhaven Wallpaper for your computer. Just click on the correct resolution, and when the picture opens, right click your mouse and select "Set As Background." If the wallpaper is well received we can create others -- send in your suggestions, or post them on our Facebook page! Bonus Video - Here's a bonus video we took the same afternoon we took the video in the woods (above). This was on our block here in Woodhaven and it's an extreme closeup of a Bee. Seemed a bit late in the year for a bee -- and it really has nothing to do with this report -- but we had no where else to fit it and we figured if you sat through 6 minutes of wind in the woods, you might be interested in 45 seconds of a giant bee :-)
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