Onion Rings and Trees

Thanks to Anne and Stacy (my daughter-in-laws) being pregnant, I have sympathy everythings when I'm around them. Yesterday I was around Anne and today I was "craving" homemade onion rings. It didn't really go with the rest of dinner... at all, but Greg made them for me anyway. Anne and Jas got here for Sunday dinner after church and no surprise.... Anne loves onion rings and had been thinking that onion rings would be good. We may all put on weight this pregnancy. Unfortunately, not all of us will produce a baby at the end and shed instant weight!

So we have started going for Sunday drives and I love to look at the trees during the different times of the year. I know that we often love certain things like old barns and pastures, and specific types of trees because of emotional connections we have to them from our past. I started thinking about why I love trees so much. As a child growing up on Grandma and Grandpa Tucker's farm I was surrounded by orchards, tall lawn trees, meadow trees, and lilac bushes large enough to be called trees. I remember the smell of the lilacs by my bedroom window on early summer mornings. I remember picking Bing cherries and throwing pie cherries (and getting the flyswatter for that one). I loved climbing trees and considered each tree a challenge and an adventure. Some trees, like the great big one in the middle of grandma's yard, were a constant challenge and I would make it farther up the tree each year. Some trees had birds nests in them and some had tire swings.

I remember the sound of the trees too. I loved sleeping outside in the yard on a mattress beneath the trees in the summer. The warm wind would rustle through the leaves and it's like each tree added harmony to the other. It's still one of my favorite sounds. And if a warm summer rain joined the melody (as long as it was not a pounding rain) I would either dive deeper under my homemade jean quilt or I would sneak out of the bed and run to the bridge over the canal. I loved to go swimming in the rain because if you went under the water you could hear it and it was so cool. Another one of nature's melodies.

One thing I miss about living in the country is all the trees and the sound of rustling leaves. I would like my grandchildren to sleep on a mattress in my yard and play in a barn, and gather eggs from the chickens, and listen to the leaves on the trees, and get chased by the crazy geese. And.... this is why... our next house will have some land with it and TREES. :D