About Would You Hug This Tree

Do you tell people that you love trees or do you just love them and keep it to yourself? I fall into the later category, but a photograph that my best friend bought changed all that.

I went across the street to wish my friend a Happy Cinco de Mayo and let her know I was sad we weren't celebrating together (we usually have a fiesta but two of her three kids are really sick) when I noticed a newly framed photograph hanging up in her front room.

Aspen trees. Lovely, inspiring aspen trees. And I couldn't help myself. I confessed. I told her all about how have I LOVED aspen trees ever since I was a little girl. Every summer we went to Colorado and stayed in an old Pony Expres Stop cabin on a little lake. And everywhere you were, there were aspen trees. And I loved them so. I think I even gave names to the ones closest to the cabin.

Now all these beautiful memories came rushing back to me as I'm looking at my friends photograph and giving her WAY more information than she needs about how much I love these trees.

Well she's still my friend and I haven't been able to get those Aspens off my mind since.

Before then, my most standards, I think I spent more time thinking about trees than most people. For example, I know all the trees in my neighborhood, have my favorites, always try to figure out which is the tallest, critique their trim jobs, and get really, really sad when people take them out (I'll never understand that). That is just what I do.

But the Aspen incident got me thinking about how I don't just like trees, I LOVE them. When I was pregnant with my second son, I read "The Wild Trees" by Richard Preston and talked about it nonstop the entire time. I think my husband felt sorry for me and thought it was some kind of pregnancy induced affliction to be tolerated. But it wasn't. I could not get enough of those giant trees and the people who loved them.

So if you count up all the people in the book, plus me, I know there are at least 10 of us that feel the same way about trees. And that is a good thing. A wonderous thing worthy of celebration.

And celebrate we will! I'm inviting all tree lovers to post a picture of their favorite tree (tree lover in photo preferred but optional) and tell us a little bit about it.

So when you're here, we hope you'll share your favorite tree and stay a while to see and read about others' favorites trees. You'll be able to comment on fellow tree lovers photos and even let everyone know if you'd hug it!

For now, we'll need you to leave a comment with some info about your fav tree and a link to the photo or just leave the info and email the pic to us. We're working on having you be able to simply upload your pictures, but haven't found a good solution yet.

Looking forward to seeing your favorite tree!