Bare Trees

When we were young, my dad would sometimes take us on the back roads out in the country. We'd often stop, get out of the car and explore. He liked to take photographs of us with fence lines, streams or leafless trees as a backdrop.  While most folks seem to prefer trees when they are full of leaves, I know that they must have meant more to him when they were bare because this is the way they are in nearly all of his paintings.

This is one of his watercolors that he painted before I was even in my teens



A tree protects itself in winter by shedding and by bringing the bulk of sap deep into its roots. We may well do the same.