A last bit...tomorrow will be consumed with kid's soccer games..The first image is an old miner's cabin with an Oak tree. In the 1850's some miners who had come for the 1849 gold rush in California found richer (easier)gold deposits in the Big Bear Valley, a few hundred miles south of the main strikes. There wasn't a lake then. This old cabin, in Holcomb Valley, just North of the Big Bear Valley, is one of the few remnants of that era...hence the B+W treatment. I wonder which is older...cabin or tree? I'm betting Cabin. What do you think?

The rest of these images are from the same mountain area, but without educational descriptions...they are just because I like them..

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Sunrise in our backyard

pg 12 Wow! Image 1 beautiful...I'll bet there is as much bark to clean up as there are leaves. What tree is this? I have Eucalyptus that do the same kind of bark shedding, and it gets pretty messy around here for a while.

Trees to look through.

RoadRunner said he would get carried away with this challenge and said he would bind (or some similar word) his index finger. I shoulda taken the same pledge, but...


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this is why they call them California Black Oaks...when they are wet, they are black.

What kind of tree are these? Best guess wins some more marginal photos posted my ME! I'll even send the winner the orig.

Meant to deceive, just a hint.

Yep, they are woodpeckers. Maybe what you said makes sense. I think they make places to stuff their acorns for future use, so maybe they really target already dead trees for that. The tree in my pic was dead or almost at the time.

They also pound the heck out of houses with wood siding (which most do in the mountains). It's an expensive repair every few years to keep it from providing access to more invasive pests through the siding.

As, I'm sure, you are aware by now...I'm not an Acorn Pecker's biggest fan!

One more group for today...Dead (or almost)Trees..

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Don't know if these guys can actually kill trees, but I sorta think so. They are a problem around our house.


I think this one was killed by parasitic growth. All that stuff on the brances is like mistletoe.

pg 7 Sweeten up your beer a bit RR? (2nd image)

The same thing is happening in Thailand...acres of Rubber Tree plants. The sap of the Rubber Tree is pure latex. Makes terrible syrup, but pretty good tires and other things.

What's the function of the blue lines in the last image?

Next theme...Trees of the Khmer temples. The 9th thru 12th century Khmer temples in Cambodia like Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and others have been dug out of the topical forests that had completely concealed these fantastic places for centuries. The Banyan and Strangler Fig tree's roots have been left in place in certain areas. They literally are holding the buildings up. Here are some examples...

Thank you...very interesting...I'll need to do some investigation to understand what you said, but you gave me some tools to do the discovery.

pg 6 Other-worldly, to say the least! Being completely unfamiliar with this technique, is there an easy way to explain why some colors seem to be realistic while some others are completely not?

Tree pic...sorta. In August of 2017 there was a full solar eclipse in SoCal. This image is our backyard wood deck with shadows from overhead oak trees.

The little gaps between leaves on the trees act like pinhole cameras and project little versions of what the sun looks like at that moment.

All the little crescent shapes in the shadow areas are the sun's image as the total eclipse is waning.

Here's a winter series...

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Oaks at sunrise




the new snow shapes the tree like a bunch of starfish - White Fir


late spring snow on new oak leaves

pg 2 Amazing! Poor guy who has to keep his deck trimmed around that trunk! (and...I think the safe, isn't very safe any more:)

This is a mistake post...can't figure out how to delete...sorry.

Thanks Photophile...I've gots lots o trees...

From my Orange period...This is what trees look like in L.A. when the smog gets really bad.

. I'll do better tomorrow
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and even in the local mountains....