To join in the fun of squares this month, create your square post and include a pingback to any of my daily square posts in July. Don’t forget to use the theme’s tag – TreeSquare, and I’d love it if you left a comment.
Becky B.
In this month’s square’s challenge I will start at home and spiral farther and farther from our home in Prescott, AZ to share different tree species in my travels. All of these posts will work for both Becky B’s Squares and Cee’s Flower of the Day, #FOTD. In addition, I want to introduce you to Mama Cormier, if you don’t already know her. She hosts Thursday Trios.
Apples That Aren’t Crabs
I’ve told you my crab apple tree story. Right? I was three and very crabby. I caught the neighbor boys “stealing crab apples” off MY tree. I screamed and brought mom and the neighbors running to see what those horrible boys had done to the precious little toddler. You all realize that Grandma needed every one of those crab apples to make jelly and I was the crab apple monitor.
Fast forward a few decades, and now I’m like the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. I’m trying to do a post about somewhere else, but it’s a struggle to get out of Arizona once you’ve been here. There is so much to see.
A few years ago Vince and I happened onto this wonderful historical apple farm in Slide Rock State Park. It was a paradise. You go and you’ll never want to leave. I found this picture in my archives, and guess how many people I snapped at – right, THREE! A trio for Mama Cormier at the Apple Farm. It’s also square, so it works for Becky’s #TreeSquare today.
“The Pendley Homestead, is a 43-acre historic apple farm planted in 1912 located in Oak Creek Canyon.” .
https://azstateparks.com/slide-rock/explore/apple-orchard
Ubiquitous Oak Trees in the San Joaquin Valley
This next picture of Bob’s Barn came from my Elderwood, California archives taken in December, 2014. The trio of vintage oaks begged me not to crop them, even for Becky’s Squares. The colors, especially the sky were drab. It probably was a drab day anyway.
Cee and I worked on this photo today in Bridge. I had already tried working with it, but let me show you the metamorphosis this trio of oaks endured.
After I worked on it on my own, I thought it was a little dark and dreary, and maybe I even liked the original picture better. I wanted a better sky, but sacrificed too much to get it.
The third picture added in some clarity and vivid colors as well as having some blue sky on the left. The trees look good and the barn is brown. The grass seems a little fake to me, but grass in December is vivid green if there has been any rain. I worried about the green walls in the barn until I realized those were holes in the barn exposing the beautiful green foothills.
The final picture retained some of the native charm of the first photo but made the color of the trees the color they probably were at that time of the year. Which picture do you like best?
A Tiger Oak Hall Tree for Becky B
My husband is the decorator in our family and he found this antique hall tree. He coyly took me to the antique store to approve it, and I didn’t like it. I could visualize it collecting coats and dust and generally looking messy in my hallway.
What he didn’t tell me was that he had already put it on lay-away. I found the lay away receipt cleaning his drawers. He had a lot of ‘splaining to do.
You realize it rains at least 10 inches each year in Elderwood, CA unless there’s a drought. It did collect a ton of dust, and always had way too many coats on it and was the first thing seen when anyone walked in the front door. But people loved and admired the beautiful wood and the unique piece of art that it was.
We brought it with us to Prescott, and have no place in our home for it. If anyone would love a beautiful hall tree, let me know.
Looking Backwards and Forwards
Did you miss Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays yesterday a new topic of Exploration? Thanks again to Terri Webster Schrandt for hosting last week. Catch her on Sunday Stills each week.
I’m so excited to announce that Cathy Cade will be hosting her friend Wendy Fletcher for August Story Chat. Wendy Fletcher is the leader of Cathy’s u3a writing group. For more information about Story Chat and how you can contribute, see my Story Chat page. Don’t forget that Gary A. Wilson’s story, “Sometimes a Miracle” is still open for comments.
The Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC) is already coming up on our fifth post right here on my blog at 9:00 am tomorrow. I can’t believe it’s been over a month! Thank you all for your many interesting responses. It’s been fun to travel all over the world through your posts. Please post on Cee’s blog until Friday.
Happy Thursday! Join me in Thursday Trios and #TreeSquare, and of course, FOTD.
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
29 responses to “Thursday #TreeSquare Trios”
Lovely trio of trees, Marsha.
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Wait till you see my rocks! LOL
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such a great collection Marsha!
Love the trees and the crisp shots you got!💖
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Thanks, Cindy. 🙂
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you’re so welcome💖💖💖
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Sneaky Vince!
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Yes, he has hidden tendencies. 🙂
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that’s funny about the hall tree. and I think my favorite picture is the second one; your first alteration. I just like the sky n that one…
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Thanks, Jim. Sky and other parts of the picture are hard for me to process because when it’s blue, it’s really blue and everything else just looks great. When it’s white, it’s a pain. 🙂
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I never think about such things; I guess that’s why my pcitures are nothing to write home about…
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Most of mine are not either. I enjoy playing around with them. 🙂
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it’s nice to discover a hobby you enjoy…
I’m still looking…
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Come on, Jim. You love exploring what people think. You write beautifully. You are a superior conversationalist. A professor I used to love immensely asked me if I was bragging or complaining or just searching for compliments when I said things like that!
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thanks, Marsha!
When you say I write beautifully, you must be referring to those posts where I copy and paste from somewhere else 🙂
and you haven’t seen me at a party, where my goal is to be the first one to leave,without anyone noticing.
this online stuff let’s me pretend to be someone else 🙂
and that’s why I enjoy WordPress so much, the chance to meet people like you whom I never would have otherwise, and engage in some fun conversation…
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I like that too, Jim. There you go again, demoting yourself in public! No, no! I am married to the man who loves to talk about leaving the party early, then it’s usually me that is ready to leave first. LOL. I wonder, aren’t we all pretending to be someone else a little bit while we are online? We are in charge of who we are and who people get to see us as being here online. But we give ourselves away a little, but only a little piece of us. 🙂 The good news is that people love us anyway, and that’s what make it so much fun. We grow to love people we might never meet in person, and yet we feel we have shared our souls with people and they have shared theirs back with us. 🙂 It’s a glorious life. 🙂
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My wife is usually left to fend for herself, whih she does quite well…
And you express your thoughts, and mine, so well about the wonders of an online community…
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Why, thank you, Jim. We have the privilege of not being contained in our own worlds, but the ability to get out and experience the world right from our own home. Often my husband is sitting right beside me in his world, while I’m in South Carolina or North Korea, India, the south of France or South Africa comparing our lives to theirs and marveling.
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that’s why the communications capability has always been my favoriate aspect of the Internet …
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Me too!
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👍
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I like the first edit of the oak trees – I know it’s a bit gloomy but that suits the mood set by the rundown barn imho
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Sometimes the first time is the best one. It is a bit gloomy. Thanks so much for the input, Sarah. 🙂
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Great trios, Marsha, good thing Vince only bought the one hall tree or this could be a whole different post! 🤣 I like your original three oak set the best. Something gritty about it that lends to the colors and textures. Great editing for sure though!
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Thanks, Terri. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Sometimes I like the original best. What I learned from Cee is that when you shoot in JPEG, your picture is already altered to what the camera thinks it should be. With her help, I have my camera set for camera raw. You get more data. Do you use that? I’ll let you know what I get. 🙂
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I use raw with my Lumix. With the phone, I think it automatically chooses jpeg or png. Speaking of data, yesterday as I was complaining about our slow satellite internet I discovered I burned through the 20 gb allowance in the first 4 days of the month! Lame! It was mostly uploading and processing photos. Good news is our fiber network was just enabled and now waiting for the tech to come out and install it. Unlimited data plan! 😁
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Oh thank goodness. Four days. That’s what Cindy did with her cell phone, which was on our plan. She zipped through all our unlimited data in about four days. It turns out that phone plans that say unlimited, don’t necessarily mean totally unlimited. I hope you unlimited is really unlimited. Fingers crossed. 🙂
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Our “unlimited” Verizon only gives you 15GB of use as a hot spot, otherwise, it has worked. I can’t blog off my phone very well so I had to upload pics from my phone to WordPress. Glad that monkey-dance is over!
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I’d love to have it, but tad far away to collect!!!
and loving your trio, and also what you have done with the different #TreeSquares. Always so much to learn and discover in photography
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Thanks, Becky. I am definitely exploring right now. Cee is helping me both with my camera and processing. This was an old picture, though.
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