Autumn Leaves are Falling

These days, everyone is familiar with falling leaves.  They cover our walking trails, our sidewalks, our lawns, and our flower beds.  Some people refer to them as the 'flowers of fall'.  Other city folk just curse them or their neighbours whose large trees continually shed their leaves into their yards.  Mostly, we think of the fallen leaves from our deciduous trees, hardwoods and softwoods.

But, here in Canada, we also have a conifer that sheds its leaves each fall, the larch or tamarack, a tree most often seen in the wetter areas of the boreal forest.  The delicate leaves (or needles, if you prefer that term) of this tree are really quite pretty.

Several small specimens were collected from northern Ontario and were planted in the yard of my former home near Carman.  Only one survived the attention of the grazing deer to grow quite large and become a jewel among the hundreds of different trees that I planted there over the years.