Sunday, August 9, 2009

Take a walk & check out the trees

Yesterday morning my husband & I took a relaxing walk in the woods. I love to check out the different types of trees that we have on the property. My husband has researched many of the trees that we have, and he told me the tales of trees as we walked along. Come join us for a quick visual walk!
Here's our backyard, the open gate just calling us to come out...
Wild crab apples on an old apple tree. We have many old apple trees, planted long, long ago. The birds & critters seem to eat the apples before they get very big, but these ones escaped and have gotten pretty large:

Trees on the edge of an unruly field:

Wild spearmint. Maybe one day I'll use it in my cooking, but right now it grows wild down by a field. It smells so good when I break off a leaf!

One of our most hated trees, the tree of heaven. It grows wild & takes over an area. When I was a child I always confused this tree with a poison sumac.

Sycamore tree. We have a lot of sycamores.

A row of red cedar trees along a path. They are dry because we went through a dry spell, but now we are getting rain again, so hopefully they will liven up again. I don't know why, but I love old cedar trees planted beside a path.

Young sassafras tree:

Sweet gum tree. I hate these trees because they drop a "gum ball" in the autumn - a sticky seed that hurts your feet when you walk barefoot on it! We have a lot of wild sweet gums.

Black walnut tree. They have a lot of large walnuts, which the squirrels love!

Red maple tree. This is one of my favorites ~ we used to have one in our yard when I was a child. I used to love to climb it! Now we have one near our garage. The left pic is of the tree itself, the right is closeup of the leaves & the neat little seeds. When I was a kid we used to put the seeds on our nose!!!

Spruce tree. This one drops a sap on anything below, but has the coolest big pine cones!

Red horse chestnut tree. One of my favorite trees, it's close to our house. It has pretty red flowers in the spring.

Well, thanks for taking this walk with us. Time to go inside & have a nice cold glass of lemonade.
It's been nice, come back again soon!


5 comments:

Cindy Garber Iverson said...

I love your tour of the trees in your neck of the woods! It's fascinating to see which ones we have and which ones are new to me. So lovely. I'm a big fan of trees.

Cindy

Randy said...

Thanks Cindy, I also think it's fun to see what trees are in what parts of the country. It's amazing to think that some of these trees right here are hundreds of years old!
~Lynn

Robin said...

What a nice variety you have. Lee is jealous that you have a sassafras tree as he wants one. So very pretty there!

jalynn01 said...

Lynn:

Love the name of your blog and the 'razzberries' on the header!!
Thank you for stopping by my window on nature and commenting on my deer and hawks. I'll stop by and see how your property shapes up! I grew up in farming country and love everything about it... Good luck!

Randy said...

Thanks, Robin, I think it is pretty here. But it is also very pretty where you are - you have hills/mountains, don't you? The ground may be rolling here, but we don't have mountains! ~Lynn

jalynn01 ~ I saw your blog & just loved it! I didn't grow up in the country - I am a transplant from the suburbs. I've been learning alot about country life! ...Thanks for stopping by my blog! ~Lynn