shade tree

Lookie, my tree makes shade now! It's pretty good shade too. Even with those dead branches.

I've started looking at the shade from other trees now. Not that I'm comparing or anything. Wink. Wink. This is the shade from the next tree down the street, a honey locust.



I'm impressed with the shade I see under the honey locusts. Their long compound leaves are made up of leaflets that are quite small and they're more spread out than the leaves on my ash. The canopy just doesn't look as full and thick as that of an ash tree. And yet, the shade is pretty darn shady. This particular honey locust is bigger than my ash, but the shade is definitely comparable.

And then there's the next tree down the street, a little sycamore.

This is the cutest little tree. I was surprised by how sparse the leaves were when they finally arrived. Just individual little simple leaves on branches that don't seem to want to come together to close up the gaps. The canopy is much more open than even the honey locust. But even for so little a tree, there is still a nice amount of shade there. Certainly enough to provide some relief during a walk home on a hot summer day.