The Last, Beatiful Colors of Autumn

We have two ornamental crab trees in our yard; both stunning spring bloomers, one's flowers are white while the other's are magenta. When autumn comes, they quietly drop their leaves without a lot of fanfare while the maples (and a few of the oaks, too) strut their stuff and take center stage.

This year, though, something interesting happened. The little crab tree in our backyard decided that, just this once, it wasn't going to be outdone! Waiting until every other tree had dropped its leaves, it began an amazing transformation. The color has been spectacular, and unprecedented!

It's hard to believe that a single tree could produce such a variety of rich colors, but all the leaves you see in this shot came from that one crab. The fact that there is still color to be found in the yard this far into November is also quite unusual.

It's as if the little tree took the "ornamental" label to heart and decided to put everything it had into this display - and to make sure it was noticed, it waited until the bitter end to begin the performance. What a treat!