April 3: Shade Day

Every year I declare Shade Day. It's the first sunny day of spring on which I am walking outside, looking at the ground, and I suddenly realize that I'm walking in tree shade. Not from pine trees, not from bare tree trunks and twigs, but good solid broadleaf green treeshade. There is a certain quality to it, so you know when you see it that it's a kind of shade you haven't seen in four or five months.

It was a sycamore tree, by the way, but the sweet gums and hickories and black cherries are throwing goodly amounts of shade as well.




You can just see the beginning of it at the bottom of this picture.