The Little Golden Book about a bunch of dogs always worked for me. The dogs were all headed somewhere in little racer cars. The art was good and the story was properly lame and the dogs all ended up in a gigantic tree where there was a party going on.

So now we know the root of my life long affection for big trees and little sporty cars. I like dogs, but they really didn’t get their share of the pie.

This time it is Maple trees. Like the big tree in the kids book, they can be very climbable. They look regal too.

For me the go-to tree has long been the evergreens. They can be good climbing trees too, but they’re for the solitary type. Groups don’t play in them.

Maple trees have all sorts of possibilities for play and they beg for a tree house.

The canopy is thick enough to admit light but keep a sense of enclosure. After seeing children engaged in play in one of them again, I am entranced by the possibility of a painting.

Tonight I had a good long look at five big maple trees as the daylight waned.  I prefer that time of day. If you’re familiar with the art of N. C. Wyeth, you see why. He often depicted his storybook scenes in the light of a sun low on the horizon. You never saw the sun, just the strong side light it produced on the characters in his fabulous illustrations. I’ve gravitated more that direction in the past few years after a long time avoiding strong light and strong shadows.

The combination of the strong light, good contrast, and bold character of the big friendly maple tree is exciting my imagination. So I’ve stared and taken photos. I suspect I’ll have to design my own tree so I need to know how they present themselves. The problem with them is that they aren’t growing with me and my art design requirements in mind. So the perfect view of the perfect side of the tree in the right light often is obscured by a branch and it’s leaves. As farmer boy in the famous movie kept saying, I can fix that.

Mimosa and dogwood, flowering cherry and apple trees aside, is there a more friendly tree? Maple: works of art!

They have to be able to get into, even if that takes a rope from the lowest branch. Then they must be open enough that you can move around inside the canopy with lots of foot holds and grab handles.

I did this sort of search among big trees back in the 2100 project, but the object was to depict a forest. Behold:

Now I just need to design a tree and fill it’s branches with happy children at play!