I love living here. The Williamson campus is delightful for kids. Pretty gardens, gazebos, fountain, whispering wall, playground, stream, bridge, brick pathways, secret shady nooks, trees to climb.
Trees with various seed pods, berries, and nuts for nature fiends, I mean my children, to collect in mass quantities....I love that there are trees here that I've never seen before. Not just your average walnut, oak, maple, but every type of maple I've ever seen, with corresponding whirligigs in every size and color.
Weeping European beech trees, whose new growth is totally pale bright green in contrast with it's deeply colored old growth and looks like art nouveau jewelry. I do believe a posted about that tree a while back. A little leaf linden (I know, right?), which is gigantic and spreading, but with tiny dainty leaves that look like green lace at such heights.
Cypress trees, and knobby sycamores, tulip poplars, the world's most enormous-leaved-and-blossomed magnolias, dogwoods, pears, cherry trees, and Japanese maples with leaves so fine and foliage so cascading, that when my kids go under it to hide, the gently rustling outer surface looks like a snuffalupagus about to walk away. You remember Snuffy, right? It's a magical place. I need to document it and take advantage of it.
So I'm trying to do that, both with photos and these pastels I've been enjoying. And then we had to go and get a membership to the Tyler Arboretum, and sheesh! Even more amazing trees, stunning, old, twisting, incredible trees. I'm losing my mind with the possible paintings, and I've never been much for landscape. I guess that's changing.
Paper bark maple. More pastel.
