leaves

2011 was a wonderful autumn here in Tracy. The leaves turned marvelous colors and stayed on the trees forever, so there was lots of opportunity for good pics. But, um... now that I'm looking at the pics I'd planned on posting, only one of them is leaves from trees. The others are vines or shrubs. Ah, well - it was a good year for those too.

Maggie scouting the way ahead. The leaves got so deep on this street between city pickups that we were wading
thru knee deep drifts about a week after this was taken. I love this street. There are no houses on it, just the walls
of everyone's back yards, so it's very peaceful to walk down.

Spectacular ivy along one of the walls of the street above. It was positively glowing in the morning sun.

The contrast of the bright green new ivy and the fallen maroon tree leaves caught my eye. Nature is just amazing.

Ivy with frost. I rounded the corner into the little park one cold morning and all the ivy still in the shade of the wall
had this great rime of frost. All I had with me was my cell phone and I was thrilled to see that I'd gotten two great
shots. 

Close up of the frosty ivy. Took me 5 tries to get this shot because every time I squatted down, the dog thought I wanted her to come to me. Finally had to make her 'sit' and 'stay' a few feet away. Thank god for those dog training
classes.