(click to enlarge)
During the killer summer heat here in Texas one bit of beauty that survives are the bright colors of the Crape (or Crepe) Myrtle trees, blooming on the warmest of days.
Crape Myrtle blooms.
They also have these amazing limbs, covered in smooth bark.
Crape Myrtle grove at the Dallas Arboretum
This winter, the ice storm showed another side of their beauty, glowing like crystal in the faint sunlight filtering through the clouds.
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On a little ride through my neighborhood, still working on my old Raleigh Technium, I saw that the Bois D’Arc trees were shedding their odd, green, brain-like convoluted, inedible, fruit. I’ve written of these before.
The Chihuly Exhibit, Persian Garden Pool, at the Dallas Arboretum
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Chihuly Glass at the Dallas Arboretum
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These are the sculptures that were damaged during the hail storm not too long ago. They look fine now.
Does anybody really look at anything?
I was waiting outside for the day to get going and noticed the tree next to me had been drilled by a woodpecker in a long series of horizontal rows of holes – hundreds of them, all over the tree. The woodpecker must work the same hours as I do, because I had not heard him out there, pecking away.
All the trees tell stories in their bark. I didn’t have to move more than ten feet to get these pictures, but look at the variety of the tree skin, from tough and rugged, to torn and wounded, to almost soft and curvaceous.
But nobody ever looks at them… not closely, not like that.
The woodpecker has left a line of holes in this tree like Al Capone’s gunners on Saint Valentine’s day.
The torn-up looking trees are all Bois d’ Arc – which I have written about before.
Bill Chance 