Fall Colors... in July

The fall colors start on the coast in July. This year, I first noticed poison oak turning red on July 25th. Not a lot, but individual leaves on certain plants. The grass was already yellow, and the smell of mid-summer dust on the trails was in the air.

California Bay are evergreen, however there always seem to be scattered yellow leaves within a tree's canopy, which remind me of Christmas Tree decorations. These yellow leaves seem to fall more in earnest in August, piling up on the ground and on the trails beneath the trees and drifting into mini-debris jams at the riffles in the creek. It doesn't seem like the foliage in the tree looks any different, even though the yellow leaves seem to fall more frequently now than in early summer.

California Buckeye is