I think that I shall never see...

Something as drop dead gorgeous as our BIG OLD OAK TREE! 

You can't really tell how big that monster is I guess, now that I look at it, but it is freakin' HUGE!  Covers almost the entire house with it's branches HUGE!  I am so glad every year to see it spring back into life.  We moved here in the middle of the drought and I watered it and prayed for it...because it is so big and so poised to fall the wrong way if it dies ya know?  And the first spring came and with it tons of bright green leaves and I was happy :)

We are on our second spring with this big tree now and it seems once again to be a happy tree - what more could an oak ask for right?  Here it is back in January - last day of deer season actually - for perspective...

If you ignore the deer in the front there, you can see how much of the porch the tree takes up...They actually built the porch around that tree (I'm pretty sure, no hard evidence per se, but you can tell when you look at it).  It's just my most favorite thing to walk outside and stare at right now :)

I even designed one of our bars of soap after it.  The scent is described as "vanilla oak" even though I call it "Rustic".....  you can see it here at my online store.   The brown color of the soap is all natural from the vanilla fragrance and the shimmery green is from mica...I think it looks much like that oak tree and it smells as yummy and warm as that tree must feel out there in the bright spring sunshine!

Trees do so much for us here - I don't really get why some people clear cut EVERYthing on their place...They give us shade in the heat of the summer, they drop all kinds of tasty crunchy leaves for my goats to eat like potato chips, they give the horses a place to back up to and scratch their rear (heck, I catch my husband scratching his own back on that oak tree sometimes!), and they suck up a ton of that water that pools around the place when it rains, helping to dry it out!  Sure...they also cause a ton of damage when limbs break, and I spend hours picking up and moving said limbs to the burn pile...and even longer trying to get that thing lit!  And the leaves...the goats can only eat so many before they threaten to pop!  Let's not even go into how many leaves must be raked away from the house each winter...

But still - even though that big old oak makes me a lovely bit of work, I still love it and it is an important piece of the heart of this place.  It's what sold my husband on living here I think and I really hope that tree lives another hundred years out on that porch!