Giving Thanks To Those Big Burly Gray and Green Guys

I lived around the country and sometimes I wonder how I've managed to stick around my Tampa neighborhood of Seminole Heights for a whopping five years, which is 187 years in Snel years. One reason is the wacky and funny and nice characters who live in this little patch of the earth. But then I got to thinking -- which is not necessarily a good thing -- and I knew there something else.

The trees.

Besides the fact they give off the stuff we need to breathe, namely oxygen, there's something safe refugesque about these sturdy oaks that hang out everywhere, including my modest lot.

So on this morning's saunter through the 'hood, I stopped to smell the trees, as it were. And here are some of the highlights.