Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road

Or rather, goodbye to our beautiful azaleas and camellias.  It's the time of year when the buds are dropping off the bushes and won't return until next spring.  But until then, I'll always have the photos...

Well, the end of one stage is the beginning of another.  We do have lots of blooming clematis.

Ferns are growing new leaves...

...and our trees are following the 'out with the old, in with the new' philosophy as well.

Our tulip trees are dropping their buds, which I love.  They really do resemble tulips.

I'm working hard on my bird call identification, but it's tough.  We have a lot of birds and so many calls sound like random twittering.  Now the birds are able to remain concealed among the leaves, which make it a bit more difficult.  I feel excited that I'm able to correctly identify the calls of both the black-capped and carolina chickadee, the carolina wren, blue jay, cardinal, eastern towhee, eastern phoebe, grey catbird, and white-throated song sparrow.  I get a huge thrill when I hear any of these calls and I always shout out the name (even if I'm home alone!).  Here is one of our commonly seen birds, the carolina wren:

A group of american goldfinches appeared yesterday.  Love the bright colors!

I keep the feeders filled, but most of the visitors are of the rodent variety:

At least they keep the cats entertained. 

Have a great week!