Trees

I wanted to do an entry on trees. I know you're probably wondering why, exactly, I'm talking about trees, but I like trees. I guess being an outdoor kind of girl, I'm more attuned to trees and other outdoor things than "normal" city people. Anyway, back to the trees....

We have these trees here in South Florida that are kinda strange. Sadly, I don't know what they're called and being the "awesome" homeschool mom I am, I haven't even bothered to find out. lol So, if you happen to recognize them and know what they're called, please let me know. But I digress... These trees are funny because they go through fall, winter, and spring within 4 weeks. Yes, it's true. They are full of lush green leaves for 11 months a year. Usually in January sometime (after we've had a few "cold" fronts), the trees' leaves start turning red and brown and begin falling to the ground. They continue shedding for about 2 weeks or so. Once they're empty, they stay that way about a week, then before you know it, you spot tiny, vibrant green leaves poking out the branches. It's the coolest thing to watch....as long as you don't miss it. lol Anyway, Ashton took these pictures of one of the trees after most of the leaves were gone. Next year I'll have to take pictures at each stage. I always say these trees show our seasons.

You can just barely see the deep red leaves remaining on this tree.

The next tree I want to talk about is mango trees. Even though I grew up here, and with mango trees in my own yard, I really don't know that much about them. I do know that there are different "breeds" of mangoes that produce fruit at different times of the year, thus giving mangoes for most of the year. Now typically, the "first" mango trees produce their blooms after most of our cold fronts have gone through, like say the beginning of March or so. But this year, about the first or second week of January, the "first" trees were sooo full of blooms that some trees were literally bent over with the weight of them all. It was so beautiful. I guess because it had been so warm for so many weeks prior to that, the trees thought it was spring and time to spring forth. As a matter of fact, the trees were more full of blooms than I'd seen in several years. This was really neat, but unfortunately, just a week later two huge cold fronts came back to back, killing about 90-95% of all those blooms. I actually took some pictures of the mostly stripped trees, but have somehow lost them. I'm not a big fan of mangoes personally, but it was still sad.

Don't know why I wanted to share all that about trees, but I'm glad I did. What's your favorite tree(s) and why?