The close-up is prettier:

The Hazel-nuts are coloring, and have their new catkins:

The Pyracantha is loaded with berries, the blasted deer pruned off the bottom of it!

And the Tea Viburnum has some beautiful fruit, I have a fence around the lower part of it, but it has still been pruned. :-(

I must enjoy them now, before the birds feast on them. The Cedar Waxwings will arrive in flocks before long, along with the Robins. It doesn't take them long to strip all the fruit that I have pictured.

Every day Nolon goes out and gathers up the fallen Chinese Chestnuts. We have 2 trees. They are seedlings, and the second one, that is now dropping it's nuts, has much larger ones than the first. I have one large margarine tub filled with the smaller ones, and the second tub is over 3/4ths full of a combinationof the two.
I hope I get around to roasting them this year! I let last year's go bad. :-(

Maybe our tomorrow's company and I can roast Chestnuts.:-)

I will post more pics as the colors advance. I hope you all enjoy them (including lurkers). :-)

Marian

Brenda, you are right about the 'walk-about'. Our yard is about an acre, and then there is all our woods that surround it in all directions. There are deer and dog trails through the woods, that we can follow (as long as we duck under the limbs). :-) I would enjoy it so much more if it were not for the chiggers! They seem to be pretty much gone now....but a really warm day can bring them back out at this time of the year. We cannot go too far in the back woods before we come to the first of two bluffs...probably about 100 feet. We have a 'road' down onto the level below the first bluff. Nolon made it for hauling out firewood. We also had some logging done down there. I used to love going on down to the pour-off, but have become leary of doing so, for fear I will fall and damage myself, and I am depended on too much, to take that chance.

Woody, that is one of our prettiest dogwoods. I bought it. It was supposed to be pink flowering, but only turns a little pink as it ages. I am surprised that yours are so slow growing. Ours grow almost like weeds. LOL. And they reseed quite a bit. I leave all that are not in the way of my mowing.
I am also surprised that your fall color is not as far along. We are one of the highest elevations around this state, so color up earlier than neighboring areas.

Marian

Cedar Waxwings are one of the prettiest birds, I think. I love the subtle mix of buffs, beiges, and dark accents.

Interestingly, your foliage is about at the same level of change as our's.

Michelle

Michelle, it is only just beginning. I love berried shrubs.

Pm2, I would have thought there would be lots of color in your area. Are there wooded areas near you? I imagine people have lots of colorful trees and shrubs in their yards, don't they?

I saw a foliage map the other day and was surprised at how sparse it seemed!

I need to copy all your shrubs and trees for spring and fall color, Marian!

Saucy

Kathy in Napa

Thanks for sharing this, I really needed the lift tonight!

Ei

LOL, Ei, I would love to have an arboretum. So far the only thing the Pyracantha is suffering from, is the deer. I love Viburnums, and have several differant species, and varieties, most have red berries, but some have orange, and some have blue or black. I think there may be a few with yellow berries.
I 'do' love unique species! :-)

Thanks, Deanne. Hopefully it will get lots prettier.

Norma, I think I have lost only one species of Viburnum. It was a maple-leafed one.The Black Haw out front died, but there are several seedlings that I can transplant to a better location. I thought I had lost the Arrowwood out front, but have ended up with two of them in the 'island' shrub row, and another one in the back yard row. Sorry that you lost yours.
The Black Haw has edible blue fruits. They are mostly seed, but rather tasty to me.

Denise, I would love for you to do a walk-about here. :-)
The oak behind the Dogwood in the pic is a Red Oak. It is actually about 40 feet from that dogwood. We have several species of oak. One of my favorite,(in the edge of our back yard), is a 3-trunked Shumard Oak. The other oaks surround the perimeter of our yard and all through the woods. They are White Oaks, Black Oaks,Blackjack Oaks, and Red oaks. I would like to have a Willow Oak.
There are many other species of hardwoods, espacially Hickories, Elms, Maples, Ash, and Basswood, of the larger trees, and lots of smaller species.
In my yard are species that are not native to our acreage, or even to Arkansas, or to the U.S. I have introduced a bunch....a few were brought in by birds, and in leaves from town...a lot of them I sent for.

Marian

Eden

Others that are not native, but not actually 'exotic; are the Chinese Chestnuts, The English Walnut,

In my list of our wood's trees, I left out the Tupelo, Black Gum. There are lots of them in our woods. They are rather a weed tree here. But they 'do' have beautiful fall coloring.:-)

I am a 'tree-lover, but not a 'tree-hugger' LOL .

Martie

I have only two little (for now) trees on my suburban lot: A dark red maple and an umbrella ginko. The maple was a tiny thing planted in the concrete-like earth in the middle of the back yard, exactly where we didn't want a tree. We managed to yank it out and we replanted it on the front lawn where it is thriving. We also have our Ginko there, it is more of an ornamental tree, being a graft.

But we are so lucky as behind us is the original old farm property. There are many very large maples, elms and oaks there, and a smaller black walnut. The owners have planted a Catalpa this year, and it's blooms are lovely. There are many very old lilcs there too, some as high as twenty feet, a real rare sight up here.

We also live about a block from a large protected wetland, and as a result we have lots of birds. And deer too.

Julie, we have 20 acres, and one of the central acres is what I have made into our yard. I have worked on it for 24 years. I have lost a lot of the more exotic trees and shrubs that I planted.
I have had very poor experiences with lilacs here. I am going to try again. Others not far from us have very vigorous lilacs.

I planted two catalpas along our driveway a few years ago. The neighbor above us managed to burn them off twice. He is no longer here, so maybe the new growth will survive, but I have a small one in a pot that I will set out in a less vulnerable area.
;-)
I have a bunch of trees and shrubs in pots awaiting going into the ground. That is why I need Martie's 'crew' to come help me.(g)
Your location sounds lovely. You need to post pics of the old farm property, and the wet land. I love pics like that.

I have several other introduced trees and shrubs that I didn't mention. Some are native, but not found growing on our acreage. When we used to go wild herb digging on friend's land. I would bring home starts of trees and shrubs...either seeds, or seedlings. Most of those have lived and multiplied. Some of my yard plants I found out in our woods, and introduced into my yard plantings.

I wish I were not fizzling out physically...there is so much more I would like to do. :-(

T.

BTW, how are your plantings doing? Did you ever get your curved beds conpleted?

Nevertheless...here is one I took this evening, that combines what is still on the deck with the background trees and shrubs.

The sky turned out very pale..I don't know why....It was just before getting too dark to take a good pic. I was hunkered down in order to get the deck plants better...

Here is a surprise from indoors:

I took these today. They are apparently rather confused "Thanksgiving" cactus!!!LOL
Two differants pots full, and there are 4 or 5 more in the utility room starting to bloom!

Here is the 'Pink'Dogwood as of today:

The Ginkgo;

Clethra has nice purple leaves:

Hamamelis vernalis, Ozark Witch Hazel has a nice yellow:

Spirea prunifolia as seen through a dogwood, and the Tea Viburnum(on the right):

the Hazelnuts leaves are falling fast, but the catkins are interesting:

Someone needs to help me with this one...I cannot remember it's name. It is supposed to turn bright red in the fall, and you can see it's little red fruits. The leaf stems and branches have 'wings' on them.

That will be enough on this post...more following:

Marian

A rather spindly red maple off the pond bank:

A row of Sumac below the pond, on the garden side:

And last...the view through the pine tree in our front yard, by the wood fence...LOL:

For those who may have a problem getting the entire pic to come on, there were 2 tricks that may work. One: wait until all comes on that will, then hit refresh.
Two: turn off the pics after the text is loaded and then click on the red x's. (I can't remember if the second works or not...)

Maybe I got in too big of a hurry to take a pic of it. Hopefully it will all turn.....

Michelle

Thanks for the update.. I especially enjoyed the view of the spirea..

Kathy in Napa

Kathy, I do not remember my Thanksgiving cactus ever blooming this early. I am thinking it is due to so much dark rainy weather this year.
The pond will freeze in a really cold winter. Usually it is just a thin layer of ice that doesn't last long.

I think your unidentified shrub is a burning bush, some sort of euonymus.

I enjoyed your Fall color. I really need to add more around this place!

Saucy

:-)

I have a weeping Gingko, that is a Gingko grafted onto something else so it grows in an umbrella type shape - but in the grafting process somehow the yellow fall colour is lost! The fan-shaped leaves just turn brown around the very edges and then the leaves fall, still basically green, and all at once. One day the leaves are on the tree, the nex they are on the ground. Wierd. It is not nice to try to fool Mother Nature!