Wow, I really have some cool photos now as fall continues to change my garden. We even had a valley snowstorm last week. I think it was Thursday. We only got about a half inch, and it melted the next morning. Anyway, here are some nice photos:

These aren’t pumpkins we grew. We bought these at Wal-Mart, but they did look cool on our front porch. Just carved them yesterday and set them out as Jack-o-lanterns. By the way, Halloween was fun tonight. Seems like families on my block were competing for giving away the biggest candy bars!

This is my red Japanese Maple by the front porch. It’s a nice mixture of yellow, orange and red this time of year. I love that tree! It’s the best Japanese Maple I’ve ever had, and it’s just a plain Acer palmatum ‘atropurpuream’. At least that’s what the nursery told me. Maybe it’s a different variety — if anyone out there has an idea what it is, post a comment on this message.

My Chrysanthemums are blooming pretty well, but I think they’d be more prolific if they weren’t getting a little shade from the row of Meidiland roses that is starting to arch over them a bit.

The ‘Wood’s Blue’ aster also is shaded some by the roses, and I think it’s not blooming as well as past years.

These are my Alpine Currant bushes down in back by the fruit trees. I like these bushes. Nice, solid landscape elements. Easy to care for, too.

The photo on the left is one of my Golden Rain trees — the one that first dropped its new leaves in May and then they came back. It has held these leaves longer than the other one that never lost the leaves last spring (I think it was a sudden freeze and cold wind that caused the leaf loss). The shot on the right is of my water birches in the front yard.

I have thought that my Quaking Aspens didn’t get much fall color, but this year I’m seeing more yellow in them than I remember in past years.

I was in Logan, Utah a few weeks ago and the LDS temple was looking good with the fall maples around it. Also got a nice shot of “Old Main” on the USU campus — notice the big “A” on the roof for the Aggies. It lights up on special occasions. I was too late to see color in Sardine Canyon on the way there, but there were other nice scenes in town with landscape trees.

And I did finally harvest my Granny Smith apples on Saturday the 28th. I think I waited perhaps a week too long. A few of them had weird flesh when I cut them up — it was dark and sort of transparent. Not sure how to describe it best. Anyway, I made a new dessert with them: Danish pastry apple bars (click for the recipe).