One of my favorite things about fall is watching the trees change color - especially the trees I have been planting. This picture is of my favorite two pets trees, which I keep outside the study where I can see them as I type this. The short one on the left that is just turning yellow at the top is my tulip poplar (liriodendron tulipifera), which I got through Historic Trees of America. It is from a tree at Franklin D. Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park, but was also a favorite of Thomas Jefferson's at Monticello. I bought it and planted it at the old house in the spring of 2001 (where it did not do well in the shade), and transplanted it outside the study of the new house in the spring of 2004. This year is the first year it had been able to stand by itself, but it really liked getting its wrap taken off this spring, and has done very well this year.
The big red tree on the right is a red maple I bought - also by mail - and planted in March of 2002, a little over two years before we moved in. I planted a lot of deciduous trees in the borders out at the land, but none have taken off like this one. It was nearly buried in a huge pile of topsoil when the building site was scraped clean, and when I noticed it in 2004 it had already shot up from about three feet to about eight or nine. It's now not quite twenty - yet still only four years in its current location.