Finishing this year's sugaring in the woods. Great way to spend time outside. My favorite picture is the second one, with maple trees reflected in the not-quite-syrup.

While many leaves are already dropping, the ones that remain are stunning. Love how they seem to glow in the right light.

Here are some pictures I took at Maple Weekend, 2016. It was a great day and we learned a lot about maple syrup production in the North Country.

Looking up a sugar maple on the Grasse River Heritage Trail.

I love this sugar maple growing in my yard. Here it is in August glory. I suspect this tree was planted when my house was built in 1848, 8 years prior to the founding of St. Lawrence University.

The season is off to a late start, but with blue skies and temps in the mid 30s, the sap was finally flowing well at John Newman's "NewmanZone" sugarbush yesterday. Enjoyed a sunny afternoon helping him put up lines and start his first boil of the season.

Today students in the 7th grade learned how to identify different types of maple trees with Jake from Nature Up North. Students from Suzanne Creurer's Technology classes will be participating in the Fall Maple Monitoring project.

The temperature was below freezing (24° F or -6° C) when this tap was photographed. We didn't get any sap that day.

It seems like a waste to go a day without production during the short sugaring season, but then again maybe not. This cold day was preceded by warm days, and followed by warm days: a warm-cold cycle that leads to optimal production. While this cycle works best when the days are warm and the nights are cold, a cold day surrounded by warm days is by no means a loss.

This up-close is of a Maple tree stump found at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Maple sugaring farm--a very economically important business here. Upon touring the trees being tapped around the farm, we came to a section of large, old Maple trees, many of which were sick or damaged. Since many of the trees were on their last leg , there were three or four taps in their trunks as opposed to the normal 1-2.

I was driving down Park Street and noticed a line of maples in front of the fitness center parking lot. I pulled in to take a closer look at them, and found this sugar maple. It is a nice looking tree with big healthy leaves, and really adds to the aesthetics of the St. Lawrence campus.