Yellow

Back to the garden... Everything that's not brown or red is yellow right now - shades of spring. Every time I think the balloon flowers are not worth it (they spread and I'm too weak-willed to pull them out, their beautiful flowers always face backwards, they're too tall for the place they're growing), I see them in the fall and fall in love again.

 

I should really plant some of these next to the physostegia, blooming at the same time.

The maple tree is not one of those knock-your-socks-off maples, but it shows shades from pale cream to apricot to red. Here it is being yellow.

 

The fothergilla had a brief episode of some kind of blight, but I basically ignored it and it happily went away. Now I don't know which I like more, its yellow color or its leaf shape - oval? ovoid?

 

Next is this pairing. The aucuba, which has been here since I moved in, just goes placidly on, glowing in the part shade along the fence line. At Merrifield a few weeks ago I happened upon a hypericum, which I've been thinking about since the garden tour last spring. This one is a golden variety, 'Brigadoon,' meant to echo the yellow leaf of the aucuba. If I like it - and if it likes the site - I'll get a few more and let them spread.

 

In pointed contrast to all of this is the white oak, which has dropped a ton of acorns this fall and is redder than I ever remember.