One recent hot morning a light wind was blowing yellow leaves off walnut and poplar trees. It had been hot and humid for several days, which accounts for some of the yellow leaves, but these leaf changes happen at this time every year.

Nature provides balance between things dying and things coming into their own. As I traveled around this past week, at one spot I saw yellow leaves falling into the recently opened dark red blossoms of a crepe, or crape, myrtle shrub.

Native to Asia, Australia, and other warm countries, crepe myrtles ( Lagerstroemia indica ) were brought to South Carolina in 1790 as landscape plants. At that time they only grew in the warm southern parts of the country. But since then they’ve been hybridized and now many kinds can survive our northern winters.

They’re s

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