Bare Trees in Winter

Our red oak in the winter against the grey sky.

I love our big red oak in the back yard in all seasons. It provides wonderful shade in the summer, it's beautiful in the fall with its red leaves, but I think it is most beautiful in the winter when it's bare.

Here's Bare Trees by Fleetwood Mac.

I like this poem by Hank Kalet that I found on his blog

Bare Tree by Hank Kalet

like an old woman's boney fingers

the tree's bare branches stretch out
in gnarled twists
swollen and knotty with time

 

Our oak is the last to shed its leaves in the fall, and that means there are leaves to rake quite late into the leaf season.  But raking leaves is great exercise.  I much prefer raking to blowing the leaves.  

Raking leaves.

Leaf Pile.

 

Oak leaf, one of many.