For the past two days, my Autumn Blaze Maples have been at their peak color. I have three of these trees, which have been in the ground five years now. One has been sick — it’s been chlorotic, which isn’t supposed to happen to these. It lost its leaves in August, and some new ones grew back. I hope it survives the winter and recovers next year with some help.

Anyway, these two are wonderful trees. This is why I insisted on having some kind of red maple in my yard. These trees are so beautiful all summer and then they finish the year with a bang!

In addition to the maples turning color, I’m starting to see yellow in my Swedish Aspens, birches, nectarine, and some others that I mentioned before.

I got a chance to do some more yard work yesterday. I mowed the lawn and gave it the winterizer fertilizer. I did some pruning of the birches to let the pretty copper trunks show a little on the lower parts. I’ve had some question about whether they are water birches or river birches, but after looking at some online photos, the river birch has very flaky bark. These have fairly smooth bark, although there are few spots of minor peeling. I believe they are water birches.

Anyway, I also did some chopping up of old twigs and leaves with the lawnmower to make compost. I placed alternating layers of fresh grass clippings with the dry brown plant waste in a large plastic garbage can with 1″ holes cut all over the sides of it. I’ve tried this before but didn’t turn the mixture and it didn’t really heat up and do much composting. I’m trying again, and I’ll turn it over now and then to keep it aerated.