Boyce Thompson Arboretum

Fall foliage is such a spectacular show of color creating a magical glow of light under the trees.  The honey locust trees are the color of gold,  the Chinese Pistachio leaves turn red.  The cottonwoods were just beginning to change color. The sky a bright blue with patches of white puffy clouds.

A perfect temperature in the mid sixties provide great weather for wandering through the garden.  The contrast in colors from an April visit to November is fun to experience.  The spring blooms of aloes and wildflowers that grow at knee level  are gone.  The color now is up in the air.  The leaves command the attention.  Sitting under the Pistachio trees enjoying the changing light as the sun moves in out of the clouds.  The leaves in shades of light green, yellow green, gold, peach, orange and red all backed by the bright blue sky make a momentary masterpiece not to be captured but only to be enjoyed at this moment.

 

The sound shifted in tandem with the sun–when the sun came out the trees stilled, when the sun went behind the clouds the wind picked up and the leaves rattled in the trees.  Perhaps this is a predictable weather phenomenon, I don’t know, but I noticed it!  It repeated over and over.  The Fall season was blowing in bit by bit.

 

The ground beneath the trees is a powdered brown dirt scattered with footprints and fallen leaves arranged like little colored tiles.

While the leaves were the focus of my attention, the reason for this visit, there were many other beautiful things to see.  There was a spectacular cactus with a singular fuchsia bloom.  The only blooming cactus I saw.  There was the garden of golden barrel cactus glowing in the sun.

A walk among the trees this time of year gives a sense of time passing as nature shows us the the miracles of green moving into gold.  Winter, dormancy and rebirth of Spring to follow.

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