Monday, November 12, 2012
Weeping Beech
Here's my take on our weeping beech tree. It may be weepy, but it is not wimpy. Unlike those ash trees that give up early, our beech tree is hanging on to its leaves after most other trees have given theirs up completely. The first photo was taken November 1, the second one today. It is particularly significant because Dave, our leaf clean up guy, is waiting for the leaves on that tree to fall before he does his fall clean up of our yard. He'd hoped to do it last week. We currently have 30ish mph winds, which may help the process along.
Changing topics, we did our family's observance of Veterans Day yesterday. The girl teenager made her grandfather some of her famous homemade chocolate chip cookies, plus some refrigerator dough sugar cookies. Her brother engaged his grandfather in a discussion of what it was like to be in the army in Germany in 1960, and quizzed him about what his duties were. (They are excellent grandchildren.) We finished the day with dinner out at Applebees, where they were running a "veterans eat free" special deal. The waitress made a fuss over us for having a veteran with us, which he maybe, sorta, kinda appreciated. OSLO got to tell the waitress the story about how her Dad was in the army at the same time that Elvis was, even in the same country, and how at the time her Dad looked just like Elvis. She loves that story.
I believe that today is the official observation of Veterans Day, so I plotted a route that took me past a cemetery where I've stopped before to contemplate the number of graves with flags and brass markers. It was too cold and I was too lightly dressed to stop for long today, and I took no photos. It was a short 'wog' -- about 2.6 miles. The conventional wisdom that says that my speed will naturally increase over time appears to be wrong, and I'm still averaging just under 15 minutes per mile. The good news is that conventional wisdom also says that it is nearly impossible to hurt myself at that pace. Let's hope they're right about that, at least.
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6 comments:
Excellent choice of pace.
Beautiful tree, still hitting an attractive pose even at this point of the season.
Thanks, Gino.
It's not so much a choice as it is what happens when my pace is in the "seems fairly hard to hard" category.
I love the weeping beech tree, thanks for the photos.
Keep at it with the wogging. Any new wardrobe developments?
Em -- I thought you'd like the weeping beech, since you liked the weeping willows.
I was actually a bit underdressed today. I wore bike gear -- and ended up looking like I lost my bike. But the Dri-fit base layer and a Gore long sleeve bike jersey came close to being right. No unzipping took place. I haven't found a local spot that sells Smartwool jerseys, at least using internet searches. I like Smartwool -- I own a couple pair of their socks. I'm getting better at gauging what will work at these temps.
It's good sometimes to stop and contemplate the sacrifices of veterans, especially those that died overseas, but also the ones that survived. There are lots of statues and cemeteries commemorating them, but stopping and remembering is a darn good thing.
Jimi -- Thank you. Stopping and remembering seems like little enough given the sacrifices they made.
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