There is nothing more beautiful than a tree

Growing up in San Francisco in the early 50's my playground was Golden Gate Park. We lived 3 houses down from the southern border of the park which was filled with beautiful trees, bushes, plants and flowers. There was even a playground with slides and swings.

Today the trees have been thinned down, all the most of the bushes have been removed for security reasons, I guess lurking nogoodnicks will pounce on unsuspecting joggers. The swings have been removed because some child might fall of the swing........ sign of modern times.
I guess I am a walking, talking miracle. I can't remember how many time I have fallen off the swings.....but that is another story.

The tall trees that were in the park included giant Eucalyptus trees which occasionally were uprooted by strong winds....

Fast forward 50+ years, I am in Mexico surrounded by Trees.
One of my fellow bloggers mentioned that I may have an obsession about trees.

Thinking about it , I think I will have to agree.

There is something about the sound of the wind that is created through the needles and leaves of the trees.
We have lots of trees.

We cut some of the trees down when we built the house years ago, I carted down a Alaskan Mill to make beams and lumber out of the crop.

We only cut maybe a dozen trees and through the years the Mexico Forestry People have come and removed some diseased standing trees.

Last afternoon I was sitting on our back patio sipping a hot cappuccino in the afternoon sun listening to the wind make the great sound of trees.

One of my blog guru's advised me the word for that special sound is soughing.
I love soughing!

It got me thinking of something that Mexico Bob had pointed out several weeks ago about Joyce Kilmer.

I never knew that Joyce Kilmer was a male poet. When we learned about the poem Trees, it was never discussed of the gender of the writer and I don't even remember what grade it was that we had to learn the poem.
Gender at that time of our life was a pretty non important issue, our priorities were things like baseball cards or this gooey blob glob you would put on an end of a straw and blow up a large plastic like bubble, or we would talk about the previous nights adventure of Gunsmoke or The Rifleman.

I tried to remember the poem and was successful in doing the first and last line. For those of your who don't know what I am talking about here it is. ( Thankfully it is easy to find on the Internet)

TREES

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

Funny that a simple poem written almost a hundred years ago can be so short but yet so descriptive is truly a masterful talent.

Our trees some of which are over a hundred feet tall are an endangered species because of the pillaging of bandit tree cutters. Our property is one of the few non butchered plots left up on the hill.
The trees you see in the picture are directly above our house and continue up the hill to our top plateau. They are statuesque and old, somewhere about 50 plus years.

And they are here to appreciate and use sparingly.

Yep I am a steward of my trees......