Fall is coming and the leaves on the trees are beginning to change their colors. I used to love looking at our sugar maple tree in the fall, but since I can’t do that any more, I have to settle for looking at Larry’s sugar maple tree across the street. A mature sugar maple stood where you see a small tree on the right, but it died the year after ours did and, like us, Larry had it cut down, then replaced it with a new tree.

After a nice stretch of warm weather (mid- and upper 70s), our thermometer topped out at 87 degrees today. The official high was a few degrees lower, but we live here, not at the airport. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be somewhere in the 50s–quite a change. To celebrate this last day of summer-like weather, the flowers in our yard put on a showy display of blooms.

Ignore the deadheads on the rosebushes and just admire the blooms. The plants are going to succumb to frost pretty soon, and we’ll have to cut the roses back, so deadheading at this time of the year is low on the to-do list. Here are the knockout roses and two beds of carpet roses. Mind you, it’s almost Hallowe’en and these bushes are putting out blooms as if it’s late June.

The hibiscus tree has given us anywhere from 1-10 fresh blooms every day all summer. (The flowers only last one day.) Today, it had seven blooms–again, just as if October = summer. Check out all the buds that haven’t opened yet. Will they make it before the temperature drops to freezing? The whitish edges on the flowers prove that it’s fall. That effect has been increasing as the daylight has been decreasing. Apparently, tropical flowers depend on a lot of daylight to look their best.

I’m not one of those people who gets all excited about fall, pumpkin spice, and sweater weather. In fact, I’m getting ready to count down to the first day of spring, but meanwhile, today’s weather was awesome!