And the leaves came tumbling down

One of the things I really love about living in St. Louis is our great fall and the beautiful changing of the leaves. Back in Texas, you get very little color, and most trees stay green year-round. But in St. Louis, you get stuff like this (the magnolia in our front yard):

And this (the maple in our yard):

 And this (a beautiful tree we passed on a walk a few weeks ago):

And you get lots of piles of leaves for your little one to play in:

Of course, the trade-off you get with beautiful leaves is that once that fall off (and they do, often far too quickly), you get sad, bare trees for the rest of the fall and winter. That same magnolia I showed above went from this:

To this basically overnight after a particularly bad storm knocked off most of the leaves:

I'm so glad I squeezed in a few pictures first. I can also take solace knowing that in the spring, this magnolia is covered with the most beautiful pink blooms. Until then, maybe we'll leave a few leaves on the ground for B to enjoy.

 

Happy fall!