Fall Foliage Fantasy

When we went below freezing 10 days ago in McKinney, I figured that was it for fall color for 2013. But my goodness, how wrong could I be? Admittedly, the freeze knocked the golden leaves off my ginkgoes before they could hit their full fall stride, but it just seem to spur on the rest.

Every time I go shopping for small trees for our pecan forest landscape, I intend to find new types of Japanese maples. And it’s while I’m standing there in the nursery deciding which type to buy that my mind takes me back to the scores of comments my in-the-house wife has made about one type in particular: the popular Bloodgood maples. “I love those trees, Neil!” Time after time. I guess I see why in this photo.

And another Japanese maple up along our drive, this one with the bright yellow foliage of Glendora White crape myrtles behind it.

And the unusually colorful yellow fall foliage of a redbud seedling along our driveway. They’re some of my favorite small trees anyway, because of those handsome spring blooms, but fall color like this (when it happens) just adds to the beauty.

I know it’s only a leaf, but I offer this one special photo as evidence of how Shumard red oak got (and deserved) its common name.

This is a photo that ran with my column last weekend in the Fort Worth Star Telegram. It’s not, as this column promises, “from the Sperry gardens,” but it’s only a couple of miles down the road, and it just kinda sums up what a lovely fall this has been.