This time of year is such a beautiful time in the Texas Hill Country. Generally speaking, Texas does not have the fall follage events that are so common in other parts of the country. Pretty much, the trees stay green all year around, or right after the first really cold snap, the leaves fall off - all at once.
The Hill Country has had three or four cold snaps. That has caused the trees to begin to shut down their food production to get ready for the real cold. That being the case, the chlorophyll has begun to wane, and the other pigments in the leaves are left to show. And show they do!
When you look over the hills, it is a patchwork quilt of colors. I wish I had taken a picture, but the camera was in the back seat.
The tree that gives us the most color is the sumac. Now that is an amazing tree. It doesn't grow very tall, and during the regular growing season it doesn't really stand out much with the exception of ONE thing. They seem to have the amazing ability to grow in no dirt.
When we return to Swampland, we travel through the Capitol City. The roads have been cut through some of the hills there. Those hills are obviously mostly rock. You can see the striations of rock in the cut. Growing out of those rocks are the lowly sumac. That amazes me because where we put the double wide at the SSB has about 18 inches of dirt on top of solid rock. We know because we had to put the Cadillac of a septic system in because there wasn't room for anything else without blowing up rock! I wasn't too eager to use explosives. I keep thinking about finding some of those seeds and planting them around the house. I know what the result would be. I keep telling G that planting trees would be useless because in the millions of years that land has been there if a tree hasn't grown, it won't grow now.
This is my favorite season to go to the hill country though. I can almost pretend we are on the east coast with their beautiful foliage displays. It's just on a much smaller basis.
Peace.
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