Autumn Colors in the Neighborhood

The end of summer can bring sadness, but there is something about a gorgeous fall day that reignites joy and contentment.  Here is what is happening on our street and in many other neighborhoods.

This is the maple tree next door.  I think it is autumn flame.

Coming on to our street are a few beautiful yellow/gold maples with a tall orange oak tree in the back.

Here is a close up of that same orange oak tree.  Our neighborhood used to be an Oak woods, but not many people plant oaks these days.

In our front yard we have a very old silver maple.  The color is never very exciting.  We recently had an arborist clean it up, but still there is the danger of a branch falling on our house or the neighbor’s.  A few years ago that happened in our backyard and we cut that silver maple down.  We have been thinking about what kind of tree we could put in to replace it.  We need to keep it out of the wires, but we would like a shade tree.  Our soil is clay and you can see that there is a little slope, so it tends to be well-drained or dry and full sun.  I would put another chinquapin oak there, but we are looking for some diversity.

Zooming in we have two burning bushes and three small serviceberries.  The burning bushes are invasive in Illinois so if we replace our shade tree we could get rid of these shrubs at that time.  Meanwhile we enjoy the colors.

In the backyard the chinquapin oak is brown on the top leaves, golden in the middle, and still has green leaves on the lower branches.  Time to pull down the laundry line.  The crabapple has lost most of its leaves, but is full of little apples.

Some of the crabapples look hard, but others seem to be shriveled up and might be tastier for the birds.  The birds seem to be going for the viburnum berries and the yew berries these days.

Duke blueberry bush.  The two blueberry bushes I have are so red, but they are hard to capture well in a picture.  I guess I need some more photography skills for that.  They always catch my attention when I walk by them.

When I was trying to take some pictures from inside I ended up getting a picture of this spider instead.

Collards.  The Arab lady, who I shared some of my collards with this summer, came back a number of times and we have become friends.  After she came back from a month-long trip to Jordan, she came to see how the collards were doing.  I told her she should work on eating the collard and we will try to eat the kale and we will see what gets eaten before the snow falls.

Winter gardening:  This past week the plastic has been off the hoop most days and we should have a few more mild days now.  That reminds me I need to go pick some lettuce for my salad tomorrow!