And Now, For Your Summer Monday Viewing Pleasure, My Backyard Maple
Posted on July 9, 2018 Posted by John Scalzi 19 Comments
It’s very green. And yes, maples are generally best photographed in the fall, when they’re all blazed up in yellows and oranges, but I think there’s something to be said for the moment when they’re in the height of their green as well.
It’s been a beautiful summer around here so far. Hope yours has been, too.
I live in the arid southwest. A lush green tree like that is a rare treasure here. Just looking at your photo is wonderful. I have tree envy. Not enough to want to live in the wet, humid conditions that allows a tree like that to thrive, mind you. But I still have tree envy.
Wow, any greener and it’d be in the lantern corps
To be clear, I used the “auto tone” button on Photoshop and it brightened up the picture a bit. But it really is super super green right now.
Shade! Nice.
Great picture. Here in Hotlanta, I just hold on through the summer, dreaming of that first cool breeze of autumn. And having nightmares about climate change taking away our autumns and making our summers truly hellish.
We had a great maple tree in our yard, complete with a swing. As a sci-fi nerd, I loved how the fuzzy seeds were like helicopters. I could carry them up to the porch to watch them fly.
In the fall I could walk along holding a huge big brittle leaf like a space ship, being destroyed by rays (my fingers) And every late August, in the hot dry part, I would see broken wings of flying ants who had landed at the tree base to make a home there.
Now my summers are in the city, near my grownup job.
The trees in the courtyard of the apartment building that I live in are just beginning to graduate from bushes on a stick to being genuine trees. They replaced weed trees that were very nice but had developed a nasty habit of dropping major branches at random intervals. ‘Twas lucky no one was hurt, but I still miss them.
That shot would make a cool 12 month time lapse. Or perhaps the same shot in each season in a quadrant.
In the ever-drier summer Seattle, our birches are already showing brown leaves. The usual green of July is already a late-August vision. Sigh. Beautiful picture.
That bench looks perfectly placed
Now I want to read a story about a Green Lantern who’s a sentient and mobile tree… or maybe just reread Doctor’s Orders by Diane Duane, which features a whole planet full of sentient and mobile trees.
We were very lucky to have a maple planted intje front yard of our very suburban tract home. Everyone else has ratty looking flowering plums or ash trees. We have a beautiful tree that shades the house. Unfortunately, it is s variety that turns brown in the fall. But it’s lovely in winter, produces yellow in spring and helps keep our house cool in the Colorado summer. I do miss the colors of sugar maples which don’t grow here.
An oasis of shade surrounded by a sea of allergies.
The asymmetry bothers me for some reason. There is much more tree to the right than the left.
Maybe that’s where Smudge came from. Maybe kittens do grow on trees.
Unless it’s a red maple, in which case it best photographed in the Spring…
(I’d show you my tree, but you have very sensibly NOT set your site up that way)
Very good place to put a bench. Good on you.
And definitely not the same variety of weed tree maple as the developer here planted. – yours looks good/healthy.
Walter? Yes, looks like it has a big branch low in the growth that will become a problem in 5 or 20 years when the higher growth smothers it.
Also? Gosh darn it to heck! I was wrong when I thought I’d figured out how to get my gravitar icon to start showing up like it used to. Lessee if /this/ works.
Yes! My gravitar icon!
Aside at Athena: I’m a sandwich guy because I am a barbarian who drinks soup as if it’s coffee and woof woof I like to chew? I’ve made that soup from a non vegan recipe: boil the butternut squash in chicken broth. It takes carrot long to cook on the stove, so I cooked the squash in my pressure cooker. 20 minutes to heat up, 4 minutes to cook. My opinion is? Pumpkin pie spice, blender, and have you some tomato free v8 to drink.