Autumn Morning - To set this image as your background, click the image to open the large version, right-click on the image and select Set as Wallpaper (or Set as Background).

If you’re looking for some free fall wallpaper for your computer, have a look at these (as of the date of posting this, all of these are pop-up and adware free).

From pumpkins to a myriad of autumn leaves and everything else in between, you’re sure to find some lovely fall images on the following sites.

Or, simply use the image to the right if you like.

Blue Mountain is our top pick – they have some of the most beautiful free wallpapers, but you have to register (free) to get them.

American Greetings is another favorite of ours for free autumn wallpaper, like Blue Mountain, all you have to do is register for free to get access to their great fall scenes including “Halloween Lights,” “Lazy, Maize-y Kittens” and “Red Apple Puppy.”

PicsDesktop has a nice variety of free autumn wallpaper in several sizes.

Graphic Freebies has fall foliage wallpapers in four sizes.

Wallpapers TLC offers lots of fall wallpapers, however only in two sizes.

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Fall is without doubt my favorite time of the year. As a gardener you may be considering planting trees for beauty and sustainability. If you are thinking about planting deciduous trees, fall color is one factor you might want to consider.

Here it is late September and it won’t be long before the fall leaves color the mountains with vibrant tones of red, yellow and green. You can even be given fall color alerts through the various national weather channels!

Colors usually peak around the last half of October with the higher elevations changing color first and then trickling down into the valleys.

If you have a child, you’ve probably been asked why trees leaves turn yellow, orange, or red in fall. Although you might not think of it as a color, brown is another color of fall. You have to understand a little about botany to get a better grasp on fall colors.

As the chlorophyll breaks down in the leaves, the green color disappears, and the yellow to orange colors become visible and give the leaves part of their fall splendor. Some mixtures give rise to the reddish and purplish fall colors of trees such as dogwoods and sumacs, while others give the sugar maple its brilliant orange. The autumn foliage of some trees show only yellow colors such as our local polars here in the Pacific Northwest.

Autumn leaf color is a phenomenon that affects the normally green leaves of many deciduous trees and shrubs by which they take on, during a few weeks in the autumn months, one or many colors that range from red to yellow. Autumn colors (especially red) are not just due to the breakdown of chlorophyll; in fact anthocyanins (red-purple) are actively produced in autumn. Autumn weather conditions favoring the most brilliant colors are warm sunny days and cool, but not freezing, nights. The amount of rain in a year also affects autumn leaf color. A warm, wet period during fall will lower the intensity, or brightness, of autumn colors. As sunlight decreases in autumn, the veins that carry sap into and out of a leaf gradually close. The brightest colors are seen when late summer is dry, and autumn has bright sunny days and cool (low 40′s Fahrenheit) nights.

Now this is interesting: University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have a new theory about why autumn leaves turn scarlet and why the hues are more vibrant some years than others. They say that the red pigments — called anthocyanins — in plants such as maples, oaks, dogwoods and viburnums act like sunscreen. “The pigments shade sensitive photosynthetic tissue in fall while trees reabsorb nutrients from their leaves,” says horticulturist Bill Hoch. “Trees need to store as many of those nutrients as they can before the leaves drop.”

Here is my interpretation of Autumn: Autumn is warm lazy days with crisp nights whispering of the winter to come. The days are shorter and our gardens are shutting down for a long winter’s nap. Even human beings respond to the changing season. Fall weather signals us to get our crock pots out and make wonderful steamy soups and stews. I love autumn!

The way leaves change color is, in its own way, no less miraculous, the result of a complex shift in chemistry as a tree prepares itself for its winter dormant period. Through fallen leaves, Nature has provided the decaying leaves to help replenish and add to the fertile forest floor. And the cycle of life goes on!

Related posts:

1. Autumn Leaves Provide a Spectacular Sight

I admit it. This is my favorite time of year. While friends and family are unabashed lovers of the summer, with its long sunny days, barbeques, and vacations, I wait impatiently each summer for autumn to arrive. This is decorating season. My season. When the days get shorter, and the nights chillier, our attention is brought back indoors. It is the ideal time for bringing the colors of the harvest season into your home, and onto your porch.

When we think of autumn, a small palette of colors springs to mind. Colors like pumpkin, deep gold, and rust. The colors we associate with this season come straight from the harvest. Why not jazz up your traditional fall displays with something unexpected? A deep pumpkin color looks dramatic with an infusion of eggplant or a fresh apple green. Apple red along with the warm gold adds fun to your tabletop display, centerpiece, or porch vignette.

For the dining room table or sideboard, think outside the box. We tend to create and choose table decorations and vignettes that conform to a square or circle shape. Some of the most dramatic tabletop decorating travels down an imaginary center line of the table, and leads your eye to the other end. Tabletop candleholders are popular right now in long horizontal shapes. A simple holder in a dark finish of wood or metal would look wonderful with assorted Autumn-hued silk foliage running casually alongside it. If you love the look of hurricane lamps, use three or four, instead of one, then add your autumn foliage at the bases, for a casual “I just carried this in from the outdoors” look.

Don’t stop yourself after simply decorating a dining room table for the season. Look around your house for other opportunities to celebrate the harvest season. Fall colors can be added with guest towels, kitchen towels, or a bowl of seasonal fruit on your kitchen counter. Guest soaps, lotions, and candles, can be purchased in the delicious scents of autumn. A trio of pumpkins in various sizes, set on your fireplace hearth, gives a cozy feeling. A great visual trick of decorating is to display items in odd numbers, and to vary the size as much as possible. Also, choosing a few larger accessories or decorations, rather than several small ones, makes a stronger statement and gives you less clutter. If you already have a collection of small autumn decorations, display them as a set with one large anchor piece, instead of spreading them around the room, for maximum impact!

Autumn is a wonderful time for decorating your porch. Wonderfully large mums in containers are available at a variety of garden stores and farm stands right now. Don’t be content with a few beautiful plants. Create a vignette. Along with your fall plants, add a ceramic container in a complimentary color (remember those lively greens or a deep eggplant!). An autumn-hued door garland and wreath say, “Welcome.” My favorite fall wreaths have unexpected touches of color, a variety of materials, and sometimes a hint of shimmer. A gorgeous fall wreath with puffs of dried hydrangea, or faux pomegranates stand out on any door. A variety of seasonal doormats are available, as well, to complete the look. If you have been thinking of painting your front door, now is a great time to do it! Choose a color that gives your entry character, and makes a great backdrop for your seasonal decorations. Your front entry should make you smile every time you walk up to your door. Decorating for the seasons is a wonderful tradition that celebrates the change of seasons, and the cycle of life. Happy autumn!

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The word `deciduous` comes from Latin, meaning “to fall off.” What is it that makes a trees leaves change color, and eventually to fall off? Although the leaves do it, the trees themselves start it, but they are doing this in order to survive. However it comes about, the performance dazzles the eye and stirs the heart of those who see it. And even as the extravaganza reaches its climax, next year’s performance is waiting in the wings. When cells divide, they’re growing. As the ratios of these specialized plant hormones change, trees stop making the famous energy-producing chemical chlorophyll. They pull in all the nutrients they can from the leaves, and cut the leaves off from their main stems.

In September/October in the Northern Hemisphere, the curtain opens on the show, quietly and without fanfare. A tiny band of cells where the leaf’s stem is attached to the twig begins to loosen and dry out. Between these cells and the twig, a layer of corklike cells begins growing. It is scar tissue forming even before the amputation of the leaf takes place.

It is the season for brightly lighted days and cool, crisp nights-requirements for the colorful extravaganza that is to follow.

As the layer of corky cells toughens, the tiny pipelines that bring sap to the leaves are stopped up. All the while the other layer of cells is continuing to loosen and dry out. The flow of sap to the leaves has been cut off, but it is still weeks before they will fall. These are the days of autumn’s blaze of glory. Without sap, photosynthesis in the leaves stops and the green chlorophyll in the leaves is destroyed by the sun’s rays.

With the passing of the green, pigments that have been in the leaf all summer now take the limelight. Outstanding is carotene. Sugar-maple leaves have orange and chrome hues of carotene. Birches have pure yellow carotene. As nights lengthen in the fall, the chlorophyll that was used to convert sunlight to food isn’t produced anymore. It breaks down, and the other colors show through.

But what about the crimson of the red maple, the scarlet of the oak, the deep red of the sassafras, the plum color of the ash? Those colors are newcomers to the leaves. Only after the corky layer has cut off the flow of sap from the leaf do these dynamic colors usher in their dramatic finale to the fall show. If the weather is cool and bright, the leaf continues for a time to make sugar, which is now trapped in the leaf and is turned into a chemical called anthocyanin. If the sap is acid, the anthocyanins turn red; if alkaline, they turn blue or purple.

It isn`t the approaching cold of winter that causes the leaves to fall. The tree itself does it to conserve its water. Cold air cannot hold as many water molecules per cubic meter or cubic foot as warm air. During winter, very little is available from a frozen earth, and the broad leaves of deciduous trees give off large amounts of it. Without new supplies of water, these leaves would soon dehydrate the tree. So to forestall this, the tree sheds its leaves and seals the open wound with a layer of corky scar tissue.

The tree must retain its water, or the show will not go on next year. There would be no spring green, no summer shade, and no fall foliage to dazzle eyes and stir hearts. The buds of spring that burst open and send out green shoots are not newcomers. They have been there all year, waiting in the wings for warm sunshine to thaw their plumbing and start the sap flowing. Now they grow rapidly, getting the major share of available food.

But at the same time tiny buds no bigger than the head of a pin are being formed, packed with leaves, flowers, twigs, and stems. Only by midsummer, however, do these tiny buds get the food they need to grow larger and develop further. By the end of summer, they contain next spring’s leaves and flowers, stems and twigs, all tightly packed inside waterproof wrappings. Protected from drying and freezing, they wait without stirring for months, waiting for spring. In this state of suspended animation, they are called winter tree buds.

Related posts:

1. Why Autumn Leaves Change Color

Plain Fritter Batter

1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk

1. Sift dry ingredients together.
2. Add beaten eggs and milk.
3. Beat till smooth.

Fruit Fritters

Any kind of fruit may be made into fritters. If canned fruits are used, they should be drained from syrup. Apples and other fruits should be coarsely chopped, stirred into a plain fritter batter, and dropped by small spoonfuls into smoking hot fat. These recipes refer to hot fat or grease, but you may use oil or margarine. The choice of grease is up to you and your diet requirements.

The batter should be thick enough to retain its shape when dropped by spoonfuls into the frying kettle. The fat should be deep enough to cover the fritters, and it should be smoking hot when used. At first, each fritter will sink to the bottom of the kettle. Then, as the heat starts the baking powder into action, and the dough begins to swell, it will rise to the surface and should be gently turned. Repeat turning until the fritter is finely colored. Most fritters are done within five minutes.

Always use caution when cooking with hot grease. This would NOT be a recipe for children to try!

Apple Fritters

4 large apples, peeled, cored, and each cut into 4 slices
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon nutmeg

1. Place slices of apple into of bowl with the sugar and nutmeg.
2. Cover and set aside to steep for 2 hours.
3. Dip each slice in plain fritter batter.
4. Fry to light brown in hot grease.
5. Serve with sugar.

Corn Fritters

This was my mother’s favorite. On chilly fall evenings, when my grandfather was at work on the railroad, her mother made corn fritters from the corn from their garden.

1 pint corn scraped from cob
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 beaten eggs
1 teaspoon salt
Dash pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder

1. Mix all ingredients well in large bowl.
2. Drop in small spoonfuls into grease and fry as directed above.

Banana Fritters

1. Peel bananas and cut in lengthwise slices.
2. Let them steep an hour with sugar and lemon juice.
3. Dip in fritter batter and fry as directed above.

Meat Fritters

Any type of cold, cooked meat

1. If meat is in slices, dip in batter. If it is chopped, stir into the batter.
2. Season with salt, pepper, herbs, or chopped onion as desired.
3. Fry as directed above.

Rice Fritters

1 cup rice
1 pint milk
3 eggs
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons butter

1. Boil rice in milk until it is soft and milk is absorbed.
2. Remove, add yolks of eggs, sugar, and butter
3. When cold, add egg whites, whipped to a froth.
4. Drop by spoonfuls in hot grease.
5. Fry to a deep buff color.
6. Serve with cream if desired.

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Autumn leaves shown in this photo entitled “red tree:”

photo credit: mrmaccc

More fall foliage:

photo credit: Mike Raybourne

Autumn in Paris:

photo credit: r0bster

Autumn in Central Park, New York

photo credit: @ly$ in wonderland

Autumn Leaves in “Gold:”

photo credit: vauvau

Autumn in New York City:

photo credit: swruler9284

“Red Foliage:”

photo credit: greyloch

photo credit: __motion

We hope you enjoyed these beautiful autumn photos, and check back again for more of our Fall Flickr picks!

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