"Life is Old There, Older Than the Trees"

I was reading about/looking at the iPhone photography awards this morning and was struck by Ruairidh McGlynn's 1st place winner in the Trees category.

McGlynn, from Edinburgh, Scotland, was on a trip to Qatar in the desert bordering Saudi Arabia when he took this photo. I've always liked pictures of lone trees.

Mark Hirsch, a Dubuque, Iowa area photographer is another one I admire. He used his iPhone to capture a photo a day for 365 days of a bur oak tree near his home. The images are amazing. (Google That Tree)

I'll probably never have an iPhone or a good camera, nor will I likely take any photography courses. I will, however, continue taking tree pictures for my own satisfaction.

"My Three Trees" - I took many pictures of these favorites when we lived on the acreage near Urbandale.

Another photo from that same location, these trees were in our acre+ front yard.

Corner tree at Prairie Rose Cemetery - now cut down - a victim of the pine beetle.

Old Stone Cemetery in Northeast Iowa near Volga.

Sunrise through the trees and fog when we lived at 'Mrs. Eliot's' south of Fairview Church, Taylor Co.

Overlooking Crater Lake, Oregon, 2006.

February 2012 snow and ice west side of Lake McKinley, Creston. So glad I took this photo, the trees have all been cut down.

"Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky."  (Kahlil Gibran)

Mountain Ash across the street at Quiet Harbor - now also gone - but I saved a small limb to make into a walking stick.

Our weeping willow at the farm seen in the distance past the sundial and through the butterfly bush.

Sun coming up through a dead catalpa tree east of Mom's barn. I shared my memories about this catalpa grove in my blog June 18, 2013. The entire grove was dead by the early 80's. The kids and I cut the dead trees down and used them for firewood at the little house.

One of my Mother's photos of her crab apple tree, dog, Buffy, her garden and that tall, tall pine I climbed to the top of when I was a teenager.

Very old choke cherry tree on the Mauderly/Ridnour homestead under which is buried my great-grandmother's brother, Christopher Mauderly. (April 26,1864-March 20, 1881)

Some photos I didn't take - of me and trees:

Okay, so the photo is of me holding a puppy, but the tree behind me by the garage is "Betty's Tree". When she and I were preteens, Dad planted two maple trees in the front yard. Betty and I both laid claim to the same tree. It was the one south of the tree in the picture. Being older and using threats, I won the claiming of the tree I wanted and by default the other one became Betty's tree. If I remember right the reason I wanted the tree I did was because it had a branch low enough and strong enough for me to hang on and skin-the-cat.

Oh if this tree could only talk. ♫Let's go to Luckenbach, Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys.♫

I may be smiling, but I was hot and tired and wondering if I was going to make it to the top. Mato Paha, Bear Butte near Sturgis, South Dakota.

Have I mentioned that I love trees? "It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit."  (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Mingus Mill, Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The Oconaluftee River Trail.