There are still beautiful leaves in my yard, but I am expecting it to all be over in the next few days. The top picture is the blueberry bushes. They turned out in a nice combination.
The second is a dogwood that still has a few leaves. This dogwood escaped the ax a few years ago when all that talk about a fungal disease called anthracnose was going around. Advice was if you had a tree with the disease you should get rid of it pronto before it spread. This tree lost several limbs and I was feeling pretty sad about it. It was a mere chance seedling when we built the house 25 years ago. I left it because it was a dogwood and it was growing next to a stump that looked like it was going to be there a while. I hesitated and further reading turned up the suggestion to prune the affected limbs and see how that worked out. So with the passage of a few years, the limbs stopped dying, at least so frequently and it survives to bloom and fruit beautifully every year. Maybe it was not anthracnose at all, or maybe it was...
The bottom picture is a yellow bell, Forsythia. It is as beautiful in fall foliage as it is with spring flowers, and almost the same color. I am vexed when I see how some people trim Forsythia into square and ball shapes or just shear off the top of the shrub flat. This destroys the natural lovely draping shape of the shrub. Better to save yourself some work and enjoy the cascading branches filled with yellow flowers in spring. If your shrub is in a row or crowded by other shrubs so that it is not shown off to it's best, no problem. Stick some cuttings in the ground where you want a new shrub and step back. You may have to water if it turns dry but this will produce another lovely yellow bell in short order.The only care I ever give mine is to cut the similax vine out of it as well as any dead or damaged stems.
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