What Month Is It?
02 OCTOBER 2010
Is it really early October, and not late June? The original temporal setting for the James River Branch was late spring (of 1975, but the year is not important in this case). One reason I chose late spring is that it's my favorite time of the year; the other is that the trees I purchased from SAMTrees were all a brilliant spring green—actually a bit too brilliant, and I later toned it down a few notches.
Beautiful weather, combined with a weekend with the house to myself, provided me with an opportunity to do some outdoor photography, which now has me thinking I've got it wrong. For one thing, the corn is way high for June. Up to now, I've simply overlooked this little wrinkle, but it's hard to ignore its height in the photo above (click for a supersized enlargement). For another thing, under natural sunlight the spring green actually looks more like the slightly yellowish tinge of early autumn.
In the grand scheme of things, nothing about the layout changes if I moved the time of year ahead four months or so, except for one very small detail: in Naughtright Mini-Park is a cherry tree in full bloom. This would have to be swapped out. Not a big deal, but I did kind of like that touch of color. Otherwise, the only thing I'd have to change would be all of the references to "late spring" on the website. Thankfully there's search and replace...
