Dried Oak Leaves

OilMan and Dana were so impressed with the tree thinning job they did in our back lot, and with the chipper crew that came and reduced everything to mulch that they decided to thin another stand of live oaks which were growing up into the big trees into which they were growing. They are all neatly laid out for the chipper crew with is supposed to come back at some as yet unscheduled time. The colors of the drying leaves caught my attention this morning so I decided to try for a close-up. 

Almost everything is taking on the tan and russet tones of the end of summer before being replaced by the beautiful yellows and reds of fall foliage. It seems a bit backward, but happens because the lack of rainfall here in summer dries the abundance of grasses on the hills. Santa Rosa is a city of beautiful trees and I always look forward to the change.

School starts here this week, which means we will no longer have Dana's presence in our garden as much. As always she has accomplished more around here in a few weeks than we would do in a year. To be fair, she does a lot of it by mushing OilMan on and not letting him stop as often as he would like for a beer.

I want to thank all of you who took the time to leave comments, hearts and stars for my fifteen hundredth Blip about Julia. I am  touched and humbled and reminded yet again of how special this community this is. Julia's sister, Claire has offered to see if she can make a 365 Blurb book for me, so you will no doubt be reading about her in future as well as we attempt to figure out how to do that long distance.….