A bloomin' autumn

As some of you might have seen in last week's Wordless Wednesday post, there's a lot of flowers blooming around south Texas these days.

I know that in most parts of the world, "fall color" means turning leaves, and spring is the season for flowers. But since we usually come up short in the turning leaves department, we're sometimes rewarded with colorful blooms instead.

Our super hot summers don't exactly encourage flowers to bloom. Thank goodness we have crape myrtles and bougainvillea (two of the types of blossoms in the Wordless Wednesday photo). But they're among the only things that can take the heat.

When the nights start getting a little cooler (and especially if we have some occasional rain, as we've been lucky enough to get lately), that's when the colors really come out. I've been noticing some great displays around town the last week or so and thought I'd share some of them with you.

The pink beauties above are along that wonderful fence I've mentioned before, that's on the way to my new bus stop. And the neat red fruit-ing things (can no one tell me what they are?) are still on display there...

...joined lately by some really interesting flowers that, one assumes, will eventually make more fruit...

Then, clear across town, I walk by this very well-tended yard every morning and afternoon on my way from the bus stop to the library. The stars of the show there last week were these fabulous yellow blooms:

I often see the man who lives there working in the yard, and am glad I get a chance to compliment him on his work. I'm not sure what these gorgeous yellow flowers are called, but I've seen other good examples of them elsewhere on my rambles, too. 

And there's more yellow near St. Mary's. This ridiculously handsome golden raintree is along one of the back roads bordering the campus.

this would be a better picture if the utility lines were buried in this town!

These guys put on a show all through the fall, because after the blooms are gone, they're replaced by copper-colored brachts. I'm hoping since we have such a great show with the blooms this year (again, all over town) that good displays of brachts will be coming up soon, too.

We have one of these in our back yard, and it's also busting out with blooms. However, our back yard arbor management leaves a lot to be desired and there's too much other stuff in the way for a good picture to be taken. But I'm still quite fond of the tree, since it was a volunteer that sprang up in my mother's back yard many years ago and we transplanted it to ours. Her tree gave her a lot of pleasure and mine does the same for me. At least when I can see it. But I almost feel like all the raintrees around town are all of ours anyway, since they put on their shows for free. All you have to do is remember to look!