after 22 years…

We have lived in our house for 22 years. Our driveway is ¼ mile long gravel two-track though three heavily wooded acres. The ground, unfortunately, is heavily choked out by virginia creeper vines. For 21 years, those vines have pretty much gone directly from green to red, with a possible brief week of yellows in between. This year, for the first time I have ever noticed, the vines are going from green to a coral-ly orange, on their way to red. The month of August was a drought here, so perhaps that has contributed. Our new neighbor has waged a personal war on her creeper vines, pulling them every time she sees them. I thought it was a fools’s errand–her Sisyphean effort–but she is having success. I was thinking I might join hew war efforts next year. The creepers must have caught wind, and decided to put on a beautiful fall pageant in order to give me pause.

virginia creeper leaves in autumn (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)