Wednesday Vignette: October Gold

I'm joining in today for Wednesday Vignette, hosted by Anna of Flutter & Hum. This week, I'm posting a cliché fall foliage shot, because I love fall. Often, color critics dismiss yellows in favor of reds for their fall foliage, but I happen to love golden yellows. I even enjoy the pale, ethereal yellows of plants in deep shade, glowing in the dark days of November. But those will come later. Maybe that's why I tend not to like yellow flowers. I want my yellows in fall.

This Cercis canadensis is one of the most brightly-colored plants in my garden, at present. It's brilliant in the sun, but truly glows in the mornings and evenings. It's still a young tree, only 8-10 feet tall, but is still one of the largest deciduous trees in the garden. There are a few red alders out in the woods, and some bigleaf maples we planted down past the vegetable garden, but other than that, it's Douglas firs everywhere you look. So I appreciate any fall color.

  It almost matches the golden yellows of the Acer macrophyllum on the hills along Highway 30, which I saw on Monday on my way to work. I know bigleaf maples are considered a nuisance by many when they drop those large leaves in fall and when their seedlings come up in carpets, but lately I've been considering adding some to the periphery of my garden. They are remarkably drought-tolerant natives providing food and shelter for wildlife. I may need to stop one day and collect some seed one of these days from some of the more finely dissected forms, which have a beautiful texture. Or I'll be lazy and get some seed from the young trees down in our field, which have only started producing in the last year or two.

Well, that turned into a bit of a tangent, didn't it? But I suppose that's the point of Wednesday Vignette, a photo that inspires or makes you think of something.