Changes

While the rest of us Halloween addicts face another melancholy morning Burt remains as disgustingly cheerful as ever. How can he be so happy now that spooky season is over?

It's not like we don't realize it's time to move on and get ready for the holidays, but does he have to be so enthusiastic about it?

Of course, he never completely forgets about Halloween.

 Ivy has reset the one clock in the house that doesn't automatically reset itself, not that anyone really trusts it to be accurate anyway. Then she rearranged the mantle decor to a somewhat autumnal look and decided the decorating was done for Turkey Day. It's a process.   

So Halloween is over but autumn is still around to enjoy. Mother Nature delivered some pretty spectacular foliage to our corner of the planet this year. It's been a lot warmer than usual too, but the colors were still fabulous and they hung around longer than normal. Last May nearly all of our magnolia's blooms were wiped out by a hard freeze but it took the opportunity to redeem itself and put on a great show this fall.   

Unfortunately, all this beautiful autumn color comes with a price, but it's never been nice enough to rake the leaves in shorts before! We still can't believe it didn't snow on Halloween. 

Just to keep it real, this was the other end of our block when it started snowing on October 17.

Elsewhere in the garden, the lingering warmth brought out a few roses.

The aconite got a chance to bloom, too. It's the last perennial to flower and is very determined to survive in our garden no matter how many times I pull it out. At least it hasn't killed anyone . . .  yet.

Finally, I had to add this just to remind myself that it actually occurred because it hasn't happened before. Usually, we get a hard freeze or storm that knocks the leaves off the trees that change color late in the season. This year the leaves on our two-toned crabapple actually stayed around and turned two colors: orange and yellow! On the side that has fuchsia flowers in the spring and produces small red apples, the leaves turned orange. Then, a week or so later the leaves on the other half, the one that has white blossoms followed by green apples, faded to yellow. This is a bad photo of the tree photobombed by an out of control climbing rose and a dead lilac. The big yellow tree on the right is our neighbor's. The leaves on the white blossom side are still green and the apples, that are usually green have ended up a pinky-orange this year. What a mess and still, how amazing! Worse yet, when are all those apples going to fall and who's going to clean them up?

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!