2010 was a great year for crape myrtles in Cary. A great many crapes were loaded so very heavily with blossoms that their limbs bent nearly to the ground.
And the colors? Absolutely riotous. Nothing laid back about crape myrtle colors.
Many years, the Japanese Beetles get to my first buds, before I get to the beetles, and we lose the blossoms. Not in 2010!
I recognize that crape myrtles are so commonplace that they are hardly special to some people. But I never tire of seeing them. Big or small. Huge or dwarf. Whether placed as an accent at a flower bed, or posturing alone as a specimen planting, I like them.
The Town of Cary has placed myriad crape myrtles in the medians of roadways, particularly the Cary Parkway. When they are in bloom, it makes for a lovely drive.
And the bark puts on a show of its own! As it peels, it offers fresh bark of a rich cinnamon color in contrast to the old bark.
I have a fairly leggy specimen behind the house that I need to move out of the shade and into the sunshine. That is a winter project here, as the tree is dormant and we can dig the North Carolina red clay ground all year around. Along with pruning out some sucker branches, that is about all the maintenance my crape myrtles demand.
Check out my Crape Myrtle slideshow, with photos from 2010, and earlier years, in and around Cary and Raleigh, NC:
Comments(13)