Frend's veranda view

Ashcroft Colorado, across the street is the Ghost Town...read on...

Pollarded willows on the Thames near Oxford.

Our mostly picked Persimmon tree, the birds can have the rest.....

Live Oaks, Magnolia Springs, AL.

A springtime tree

Shoe tree near Prince Rupert, BC

The Tree of Lost Soles

@User, what’s the story behind this shoe tree?

https://www.thenorthernview.com/community/video-and-story-tree-of-soles-lost-or-left-behind/

jrb, I have heard many stories about it. One is that residents who left the area or died would nail their shoes or shoes of a loved one in memory.

”Legend has it that people leave their shoes behind when they leave town, but that wasn’t the original intention said David Paterson, who claims to have started the shoe tree with a few friends more than 40 years ago.

When Paterson was just a kid, he would sneak off with his friends to smoke cigarettes. But they kept getting caught by friends of their parents. “So we decided to find this place off the road. We rode our bikes up there and there was a trail that takes you all the way down to what was known as Grassy Bay at the time,” he said.

They would hike down and sit on the beach and smoke their cigarettes. The trail was quite muddy, and often one of them would sink into the mud up to the hip. When the friends would pull each other out from the earth, usually a shoe was left deep in the muck.

“As you came back out you were left with one boot on your foot and it looked pretty silly riding down the highway on your bike with one boot, so we started taking them off and hanging them on the branches,” Paterson said.

His group of friends weren’t the only ones discarding their footware on the tree. After the first few boots were hung on the tree, the collection grew. To make a more permanent statement, Paterson and his friends went out with nails one day and nailed their boots to the tree.

Over the years, Paterson has watched as more and more boots were nailed to the tree. The tradition, in his mind, was that if you lost a boot on the hike, then hang the remaining boot on the tree. He doesn’t understand why there are high heels and ski boots up there, no one would be hiking in those.

Who knows?

And here I thought it was a lacebark pine. ;-)

tj

...or a rubber tree ;)

Or sandalwood

Trees after tornado

Trees here in Frankenmuth, Michigan, today.

Lynn, is that even real? looks like a storybook town!

Oh how could I forget... a shoe tree!

Ded, yes, it’s absolutely real. And so beautiful! A Bavarian town that’s a huge tourist draw. Today, with a bit of snow on the ground and all decorated for Christmas, it was breathtaking!

Lynne, enjoy Frankenmuth!! You'll have to have the chicken dinner. Family style dining, everyone sits at long tables and passes the bowls around.

Move over this way.

Look up.

Look at the camera.

Perfect.

A brother and his two sisters!

I love trees - and so many lovely photos of them too😃

Huge kapok tree in our neighbors yard - it has beautiful, huge red flowers in the spring , which turn into large seedpods filled with tightly packed masses of white fibers and seeds, which then float away, coating everything around when they open, and sprouting everywhere - causing us to curse it 😄

P.S. Here's a pic of some of the fallout in front of the neighbor's house - the fibers float around in the air too...

Muir Woods, CA