The leaves are pretty much at peak color right in our area now. We have had several days of rain and so a lot are starting to be knocked down. This is my backyard- you can see one of my squirrel boxes in the pine on the right side of the picture.
This is standing in my yard looking down the street.
This is standing in my yard looking down the street.
My favorite tree in the yard, a white oak. The bottom leaves are still green and the top are brown, it is shaded as it goes up. Most of the leaves will fall from it this fall unlike some oaks that seem to need the new leaf budding in the spring to push the old leaf off. Ded probably knows more about that sort of thing than I so. I could throttle my husband, he nailed that bluebird house to the tree because I cut down the damn pine that the house WAS on.
7 comments:
Beautiful photos. You have quite a yard. All our leaves are down now. It might snow on Monday. Not sure if I'm ready or not, but it doesn't matter. It will come.
Our leaves are beginning to fall, in fact, I can't see the deck for them. The color across our pond on the high hill is wonderful and I saw the loveliest silver maple the other day. I think I heard the peak of color in north Georgia is this weekend.
I'm a bit concerned about that white oak. I've never seen such severe delineation in fall color on a tree. While a gradual difference due to shading, as you suggest, or to exposure to freezing temps, is common, such a green/brown line just isn't right. Have you seen it before on that tree? If not, the top may have suffered some disease or insect problem. You will know next sping. Or maybe it's just some weird Southern regional variation, like grits or the Allman Brothers, that I am not familiar with.
Here, most oaks species hold their leaves into early winter, and oak saplings into late winter or even early spring. The oak in your area I am familiar with whose old leaves are felled by the emergence of new ones is the the live oak, Quercus virginiana. There may be others, I don't know.
Thanks for pointing out that it might be a problem. If the tree is in trouble, I am going to blame my husband. The trees down here have been doing funny things for the last three years because of the drought, dropping leaves, which is understandable, flowering at inappropriate times or not at all. If you can believe it, our forsythia did not flower hardly this spring and THAT was a shocker. We used to have acorns by the tractor trailer load, no kidding,, and none of the oaks in my yard or elsewhere on the street have produced nearly what they have before.
Mast production is directly related to spring and early summer moisture levels: no rain, no nuts. Ditto with flowering deciduous shrubs, though poorly timed pruning or a change in available light can be factors.
When walking people's yards (which is done almost always with the woman of the house), I have at hand two major excuses when asked to explain the inexplicable: "failure to thrive" and "your husband did something wrong."
Beautiful pictures Sheila!
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