FALL IS YELLOW

Fall is yellow here at PFHQ.
The swamp sunflowers grow slowly taller all summer long signaling, as they grow, the return to school and the fall. These are short ones in the photo.
 I've had them grow 12 feet tall in the garden soil.

Coreopsis blooms mostly down by the pond, but this lone wolf was living in the sandy, dry highlands in the back.

Some of the yellows signal the end of a long hot summer of rampant growth, like this wild muscadine leaf.
"I'm done here, hope you enjoyed the grapes..."

The Golden Orb Weavers, the big girls, are mostly gone or barely hanging on. Their personal yellows have faded, but the web still glows golden in the fall light.

The real yellow stars here at PFHQ are the Golden Asters, a native wildflower that grows thicker and with more blossoms than any plant nursery product I've planted here.
... and they do it in white, semi-sterile, almost beach sand.

Huge sprays and rampant clusters of these asters line the trail that Coquina, Bear, and I use multiple times a day.
We'll miss them when they are all done.
They are tall and therefore great to pee on if you are a dog, and as for me, I just enjoy the sight of them.

The Cow Lily, or Spatterdock that lives in the cattle trough garden pond has poked a bizarre yellow flower up into the air where the pollinators work.
No honey bees of course, but the natives are still here.
We natives hang on.

Only yellow for a short time, and already fading, this baby gopher tortoise was being nose snuffled like a scaly hockey puck by Bear and Coquina before I rescued it.
No harm done.
This yellow is more a sign of pleasant work done last spring than a sign of fall, but it is yellowish, it is fall, ... so it counts.
I held it just long enough to take a few photos and then ushered the tiny tortoise over to the welcoming dark safety of an active gopher burrow.

                   A little tap and this bit of yellow went dark.

That seems fitting, because as yellow Fall fades here in North Florida,  Blue-Purple Fall will take over.

I see signs of it along the roadsides and here at PFHQ.

Another story soon enough ...