To live here in New Hampshire is to live in one of the prettiest states in the country, especially in the fall. Our fall foliage is enjoyed every year by millions of people from all over the world.
And the best thing ever - I live RIGHT HERE and get to enjoy all of this everywhere I drive!
Here in Portsmouth NH, where I live, our foliage lags behind most of the rest of the state by a week or two. We're the southeastern part of New Hampshire, and right here along the coast.
Ah, the good life - the town of Portsmouth , the ocean right here, moderate weather, and yet the mountains and all the activity in those areas as close by as well!
Take a look at some pictures of the absolutely glorious fall foliage I see every day, on my way to work and anywhere else I drive around the area -
Every year, we seem to hear the same old thing - the colors this year just aren't as bright and brilliant as last year, or some other year.
And yet, every year, the colors are just as beautiful as past years.
I recently read that the makeup of oranges, yellows and golds are there in the leaves basically all the time. Those colors will show up yearly no matter how much or how little rain or cold weather we get. However the weather does seem to greatly impact the reds. The brilliance and brightness of the red colors in our leaves up here are very much dependent on temperatures, rain, and the amounts of sunlight. It's the reds that cause some falls to be so much more dramatic and brilliant than others.
The rich reds here show up most in the sugar maples. That's usually the tree used in calendars and picture books when they show off bright red foliage.
It used to seem like fall foliage began to peak in many areas around Columbus Day weekend. If we've had unusually warm weather in summer and fall, we then seem to have unusually late foliage that year.
Sometimes those peak periods happen almost toward the end of October. This seems to be one of those years here in the Seacoast areas of NH, around the Portsmouth area.
My yard has a number of huge maples in it, along with an oak tree or two, and plenty of pine trees of various varieties. I'm close enough to the water that the leaves on my trees are still mostly green. 
One of my beautiful maples in the backyard did turn all yellow just in the last 2-3 days.
And is it gorgeous when the sun hits it and shines the light through all those yellow leaves! It casts an entirely different color of light that gets diffused through the back part of my house - beautiful!
My maples here in my yard are Norway maples, silver maples, and sugar maples. And we will end up with a fabulous array of reds, oranges and yellows in the trees, and then all over the yard. It usually takes us forever to get them all up!
A couple of fun websites to check out the see the progression of color are the State of NH's Foliage Map, and Yankee Magazine's Foliage Maps and Updates.
Just think, if you lived here in Portsmouth New Hampshire, you could be enjoying all this glorious color right out your own front door!!
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