Colorful Fall Foliage or, The Best I Could Do Considering What I Have to Work With

Facebook friends from around the country are posting pictures of colorful fall foliage.

Last week I walked around our apartment complex and snapped a few shots of our foliage. Most of the trees around us are live oak, post oak, pecan, and Ashe juniper (a vicious allergen, known in Central Texas as cedar, and loudly cursed for several weeks every winter).

I got one shot of an anemic crepe myrtle, but it didn’t turn out.

Speaking of crepe myrtles, back in Mrs. Dauchy’s second grade [Hi, Cullen], we were instructed to gather pretty leaves, put them between two sheets of wax paper, and iron them to make pretty placemats.

My yard boasted a number of trees—pecan, elm, ash, hackberry, peach, chinaberry—but no pretty leaves.

Three huge crepe myrtles lined the street on the north side of the house, and one grew at the end of the driveway, and in summer, when they bloomed, they were gorgeous.

 

But in the fall, the little green leaves got a few reddish-brownish-yellowish-deadish spots. Then they fell off.

My mother suggested I go across the street and ask Miss Essie Langley if I might have some leaves from her something-or-other tree—big yellow leaves, they’d have made lovely placemats.

I was shy. I wouldn’t ask.

Note: The Langleys were our wonderful neighbors. We often sat in their yard on summer evenings, and Mother and Miss Essie were always back and forth across the street. Mr. Will gave me two rat terrier puppies when the mama dog that lived on his farm had litters. Miss Essie would have been pleased to give me some leaves.

But I was shy. And stubborn.

My mother said she wasn’t going to ask Miss Essie for me.

So I ended up with a bunch of ugly little crepe myrtle leaves ironed between two sheets of wax paper.

But I’m sure I wasn’t the only second-grader in my class—or in the whole of Central Texas, for that matter—with ugly placemats. Even the socially inclined would have had trouble finding colorful fall foliage.

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Fall foliage, Austin, Texas.

This is, of course, only a small sample. Some places are lovely.
But all in all, we save our color for spring.

Multiple pictures of colorful leaves
are actually several shots of the same tree.

 

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Image of crepe myrtle blossoms by Deborah Jackson from Pixabay

Image of giant crepe myrtle by Bishnu Sarangi from Pixabay

Images of fall foliage in Austin by Kathy.