Summer Shade

Ah, the shade of a tree! What a grand creation. I can't bear the thought of people living where there are no shade trees. I know many people do live in cities where the sidewalks meet the bricks of the buildings and there are no shade trees except in parks. How sad it would make me to have to live without trees.

We sat this afternoon out under an aged spreading pecan tree with its sandbox square around its trunk. We ate bowls of peach ice cream sitting in that sweet shade with a warm breeze stirring across the west orchard.

Here are Ron and Rachel under the big pecan-the swing tree. The old playhouse we call the oil shack because it was once used as a workman's shed for oilfield workers. The big pecan tree is probably 125 years old. (The one with the treehouse in its arms.)

Brenna and Alton love to climb the sycamore tree that I hang my bird feeders on. Whenever I see them climbing that tree I realize why it was a good sort of tree for Zaccheaus to climb. The branches are almost straight out from the trunk which would make it easy to climb even for a small man. "Zaccheaus, You come down!" We sang that little song in Sunday School when I was a child and I always thought sycamore trees were native Holy Land trees. How surprising to find them in Oklahoma!

The sycamore tree makes a fine shade too since its leaves are the size frisbees. It shades the porch and the side yard. Our picnic table sets there, and in the spring the hard balls of seeds disintegrate enough to drop and fly off as brown fluff.

It does seem unfair that I have been blessed with so many wonderful trees while some people have none at all. Maybe God gave them to me because he knew I would love them so much.

Elece