Autumn around my house

I’ve been laid up, figuratively speaking, from a lower back issue which has made standing up problematic. Little good has come from this, but today as a bit of therapy, I took a perambulation around our yard and the near neighbors. Here’s what early autumn looks like in Raleigh, NC. The shrub above does its thing along our front walk. I’m too lazy to look up what it is.

To give y’all perspective, about 75% of all leaves are still green. I know, this is different than Up North. The 2nd weekend of October always had the reputation for being the peak of leaf-peeping season when I lived in New York near the Massachusetts border. Here…it’s a little different. In the above photo, the two tallest trees which stand in front of the others, are two tulip poplars in our backyard. (The house roofline is visible at the bottom of the photo.) The one on the left is exposed more with no tall trees immediately around it. It starts dropping a few leaves in late July or early August because our heat stresses it (I guess). It starts dropping leaves before anything else, and at this point is 75% bare. The tree on the right sits further back, and is protected more as a result. It’s just now taken a decidedly yellow tone with most of its leaves. As you can see, many of the trees remain green. At the bottom of the photo are the upper branches of a dogwood. Not all of the trees remain in a green state, though….

This is what all of the dogwoods on the property look like. We have six or eight. If they aren’t this red, they’re a mix of dusky red and green. Some trees around us are a bit further along…

Chrysanthemums aren’t the only fall flowers. The above is blue mistflower and blooms somewhere around Labor Day. It stays beautiful until a really good frost hits. Fortunately, that shouldn’t happen for at least a week, so we’ll usher in November with these lovelies still blooming. They’re ‘volunteers’ as near as I can figure: they don’t look as if they were planted because they grow in several of our flower beds. The ones above appear along the walk to our front door, appearing when I most lament the end of the purple coneflowers.

Sometimes autumn is just here and there…as are we…

Ciao, y’all.