Fall nursery pictures

Colorful sweetgum leaf fluttered into one of our bird baths yesterday.

Caught little fella right before he got crushed by a truck.

He shook my hand to thank me for my kindness before I dropped him into his new home.

Backlit japanese maple with its stunning fall coloration.

Odd insect larvae slithering it’s way around last week. Gross. Gross, yet a great example of the sophistication of mother nature’s creatures we know nothing about.

Small bottlebrush buckeye about to go dormant. This plant is a woodland winner with deer proof foliage that lives in full sun or full shade.

Acer palmatum aconitifolium absolutely glowing in the full morning sun thursday.

Deeply serrated foliage of full moon maple delights.

Flawless foliage of fothergilla gardenii unmolested by the travailles of summer heat, insects and fungus. White bottlebrush foliage before leaves in April, soft green foliage on a deer-proof self-pruning shrub. Full sun brings the very best fall colors. Not often planted by people.

Sugar maples glowing in the afternoon sun during rush hour last week. Birch trees about to go leafless for the winter. This time of the year is always beautiful and at the same time sad as Mother Nature seems to go away until the chickadees start singing in March.

Even our hydrangeas hesitate going dormant, clinging to color production even as their leaves turn orange and drop off the plants onto the gravel beneath.

There is beauty all around, even in the most unlikely places, offered to us by the most unlikely organisms.

Columnar ginkgo foliage yellowing right in front of my eyes. Flawless leaves immune to insects and disease offers a unique look in your yard.

2’ tall white faced hornets nest- biggest one I’ve ever seen. Swirly patterns represent one mouthful each of chewed cellulose to construct the passive air conditioning vents, walls, and living quarters of hundreds of hornets. I no longer kill these nests, realizing that “live and let live” works. You never even know they’re there until the leaves drop in oct/November. They serve a role in our ecosystem.

Weeping hornbeam headed off to Westport this week. One of the best year-round trees you can get.

Yellowish-green fall color leads into increased visibility of arthritic, tortured, gnarly canopy with steel-silver bark perfect for landscape lighting.

Course, after you burlap a tree, you gotta water it. iPhone-12 pro captures movement in a freeze frame world.