Trees From My Past

I love trees.  I've mentioned in previous posts that I grew up in southern Arkansas.  Needless to say, there are a LOT of trees in that part of the country.  In the front yard of the house where I grew up were four large trees - a pine tree, a sweetgum tree, a sassafras tree and some sort of oak tree.  From what I can find on the internet, it appears to have been a water oak.

My parents are both deceased and the old home place was sold years ago. The house where I grew up burned not many years after it was sold. So, the property has been left for mother nature to reclaim as her own. In some ways this is sad, but it also gives me a sense of peace. My sister and I try to make a trip once a year down there to visit the cemetery and we always drive out to the home place.  We call this annual trip our "pilgrimage".

In the picture below, the pine tree that I mentioned is to the right of the car and the sweetgum tree is in front of it.  This picture was taken this past summer when my sister and I were on our pilgrimage. 

Beyond the trees, you can see the top of an old shed.  My parents used to call this the "crib".  I think this name came from the fact that it was probably used as a corn crib in early years when the land was farmed (probably with mule and plow).  Here is a better picture of the crib.  The sweetgum tree is on the left of this picture.

My father inherited the land from his parents and by the time we moved there in the 1950s it was no longer farmed.  However, my dad kept the crib in good repair and even had a small wood burning stove in it so he could work in it during the winter.  I'm not sure what sort of wood is on the outside of this building, but it has not rotted even after all these years.

I didn't take any pictures of the other trees this summer, but I was astonished by the size of the crepe myrtle bush below. 

This "bush" must be 15-20 feet tall.  That is a lot bigger than they grow in this part of Oklahoma!  I remember this bush only being maybe 8 feet tall at the most when I was a child.  I don't know how many more years we'll be able to make the long trip to southern Arkansas to visit these memories.  But, I hope to take my grandchildren on this pilgrimage some day and share with them some of the stories from my childhood.