Why I Oughta...

My trip to Japan (with brief stops in Tokyo on either side of a few days down in Nagoya) coincided with the Cherry Blossom Trees being in bloom.  This was the second time I've visited Japan during the Cherry Blossom bloom with the first one being back in 2017.  Here's a post showing the trees then .  I loved the experience so much that I decided to try to find a flowering Cherry Tree to add to our own backyard.  I ended up with this Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree .   The trees this time weren't as full as I think we came a little bit later (late March/early April) this time.   You can kind of see that in the photo above.  It has already bloomed and has lost some of the flowers.  In the photo below, you can clearly see the blooms had mostly fallen off already.   Doesn't mean it wasn't as beautiful.  It was and these photos don't do the trees justice.   This marks the third straight year for Cherry Trees with 2018 being a visit to DC for those alon

Walking around Tokyo for a few days in February, I was struck by the parkway trees.  Or 'Street Trees' as they are called.  There's a whole site called "Street Trees of Tokyo" here .  In the photo above you can see two kinds of street trees.  On the left side, you see a more mature, but HEAVILY pruned tree.  And on the right, in the braces, you can see a much younger more columnar-by-nature tree that hasn't been pruned or touched in any way. The trees that are heavily pruned take on an almost columnar form which helps in the narrow areas where they are shooting up in the parkways.  But, I can't help but wonder what they'd look like if they were allowed to grow out.  On the Street Trees of Tokyo site, they point out the pruning thusly : Unfortunately, most of the street trees in Japan are excessively pruned under the excuse of preventing toppling of the trees during the typhoon season in autumn. Consequently, street trees in Japan are in average