Last of the fall color

Much of the fall color has gone. The swamp cyrillas are hanging on to about half of their leaves, now turned a festive Christmas-y red, and most of the roses are done. Fall is like a reverse spring where the focus narrows and narrows to a few spots of color: a very late-turning blueberry here, the glowing leaves of a rugosa there, the burnished burgundy of the oak-leaved hydrangeas.

Pictures of the roses from a week ago:

Rugosas

Carolina rose

A purple-flowering China/gallica

Prairie rose (Rosa setigera)

Resident mockingbirds LOVE the hips.

Another prairie rose, different species (Rosa arkansana)

I love the way the little garden beside the house looks, although I've found the appeal hard to capture in pictures. This one is also from a week ago. The rosy gold shrub to the left is a rugosa rubra, the straw-colored stalks are spent hardy ginger, and the gold to the right are from the shorter 'Foxi Pavement' and the extravagant 'Sir Thomas Lipton' (still covered on top with yellow/apricot leaves). The long stems leaning across the path belong to a swamp sunflower.

For contrast I wanted to put up a couple of pictures from late April, but couldn't find an exact match on a sunny day. Quite different though!

The oak leaved hydrangeas take the prize for keeping their leaves the longest. The 'Dayspring' east of the house has been colored for at least a month, a deep wine color with a scattering of crimson, and the 'Pee Wee's at the front of the house have turned now too. The hydrangeas at the front always turn later because they don't get much sun this time of year. One year they didn't turn at all, just froze before they get a chance to turn, but usually they do, very late. Just yesterday, for the first time on a cold overcast day, I noticed how brilliant the red leaves looked. They looked lacquered from the rain.

These pics are from today.

Truly a four season shrub!

The transformation of lowly weeds into things of beauty this time of year never fails to amaze me. I call them lowly weeds because for the first half of the year they bug me. They really look like weeds. Then starting at Halloween they transform into silver and gold creations.

Broomsedge in one of the floodway fields; the tall grass is sugarcane plumegrass, which I never consider a lowly weed.

I love the way the seedheads of goldenrod and dog fennel look in the fall and winter too.

Fall Drama

There's been some dramatic color this fall, as well as some drama with the horses. Prince has had a rough month. Nearly three weeks ago he injured two tendons in his front leg, and a week ago he re-injured them. I was very worried about him last Thursday. His leg was so painful he was having trouble walking on it. The vet came out that day, sans ultrasound machine, at which point I wanted to tear my hair out. However that acute phase soon resolved and an ultrasound on Friday showed that the leg was the same. Rather than further injuring the leg he must have undone any healing he had accomplished so far. He doesn't have a major tear but there are minute tears all along the midsection of both the superficial and deep digital flexor tendons. The (optimistic) prognosis is 6 months before a return to full work. 12+ months is not unheard of. He can be worked under saddle prior to that 6 month mark, but walking in straight lines only at first, with small amounts of trot added later on.

He is wearing a quilt wrap + vet wrap + Elastikon as a support bandage to help minimize the swelling in his leg.

Truth be told I don't like the way his feet look, so we will pull his shoes and go back to trimming the horses' feet ourselves. The toe is too long and the heel is too far forward and that is not helping his leg.

Sleeping Beauties

Even though I can't ride, Prince isn't in danger and the weather has been delightful overall. I wish that golden time between 3 and 4 in the afternoon could go on until 11 at night. The sun and the bare branches create wavering shadows on the grass and the light shining through the golden leaves of the rugosas makes them look like textured stained glass.

The blueberries have lost about half their leaves but when they were at
their peak a week or two ago they were something to marvel at. So ruby red!

The swamp cyrillas and rugosas, on the other hand, are at their peak. There are three cyrillas by the old house site. One has already turned bright red

while the other two are still a rainbow of colors. They, too, will eventually turn scarlet before the leaves finally drop. I love this very late-turning tree. When it flowers in July it looks like the sorrel trees that bloomed the month before.

Cyrilla with blueberry

I always forget about the rugosas' fall color until they turn.

What Rosa virginiana lacks in fragrance it makes up for in fall color. It's more dramatic than that of Rosa carolina.

'Miss Bessie' is nearly done now but what a show she has put on! ~ the belle of the ball for pollinators in late October through early December.

Top: Willowleaf aster 'Miss Bessie' and American beautyberry. Bottom: Japanese beautyberry

'Miss Bessie' forms a rangy shrub that is covered in lavender-purple blooms and every bee, butterfly, wasp, and pollinator that you can imagine are drawn to the flowers.

She may be tall (up to 5 feet) and a little bossy, but if you like purple and you like bees and butterflies this native aster is incomparable in the late fall garden. 'Miss Bessie' blooms a good month later than any of my other asters and isn't at all fussy about drainage. In fact I've seen her climb down into ditches that I planted her atop of and thrive there, when Georgia asters and big-flowered asters in better-drained locations melted away.

Fall ~ The late turners

The late turners ~ the beech trees, sweetgums and oaks ~ held onto their leaves through Sandy and have looked beautiful the past ten days.

Our farm was logged at some point over 30 years ago, and so we have a lot of fast-growing lowland pioneer trees: loblolly pines, tulip poplars, red maples, sweetgums, willow oaks, and river birches. The sweetgums always seem to be reliable in fall; they are less picky than their more flamboyant brethren the red maples and are beautiful in their own right, first turning gold and then adding red to appear orange, and finally a deep burgundy/ purple. They are the Joseph's coat of fall trees.

View of sweetgums from front porch

Next to the old house site

Sweet betsy and sweet gum

This being a mid-successional forest there are many small young beeches, oaks and
hickories in the understory, waiting their turn to dominate the forest. One of the
older youngsters near the old house site glows like a candle when it colors late in the fall.

I've always liked this oak at the edge of the neighbor's pasture. It's usually a rich rusty color
but is more of a pumpkin hue this year. It's a red oak of some sort, perhaps a cherrybark oak.

Willow oaks grow next to a couple of the pastures. They had some color this year, although their best year was after Fran in '99, when they turned a radiant golden yellow. Everything turned brilliant colors that year. The formula for a really good fall in this area seems to consist of a good amount of rainfall in September and early October followed by relatively dry and calm weather after mid to late October.

Even this sweetbay (Magnolia virginiana) has turned yellow. It's tardily deciduous (meaning that it usually doesn't lose its leaves until late winter), and as I recall the leaves usually just turn a bright brown before dropping.

This has been a stellar year for the musclewoods (Carpinus caroliniana), aka ironwood aka American hornbeam. The young trees at the woods' edge have been spectacular cloaked in their yellows, reds, and oranges.

Although serviceberry is known for its beauty in the fall, our wild serviceberries usually prematurely lose their leaves to leaf spot. However, a serviceberry tucked in a semi-hidden spot surprised me ~ although not for the first time ~ with its beautiful bronzy golden and orange colors. I'm glad I saw this, for later that afternoon when I was hunting for young wax myrtles at the edge of our woods I was delighted to find a cluster of tiny serviceberry seedlings of that same golden hue. I potted them to grow up for a year before transplanting elsewhere. There are many treasures to be found near the edges of woods. I found a tiny dogwood seedling (which I left and need to feed so that it will grow and catch up with its parent) and I always see a lot of young blueberries and sweet pepperbush and cinnamon ferns.

This isn't even the end. The blueberries and swamp cyrillas (the very best of all, imo) are peaking just now. Many of the blueberries look like rubies and one of the cyrillas is as orange as a pumpkin. Another is as red as the blueberries.