I love details. I photograph signs, shadows, all the little things. If I ever end up doing landscape photography, I’ll be shocked.

Last Saturday I found beauty in 2 trees, 1 in Lower Highlands and 1 in South Platte.

Across the street from the Smithson Clinic, on Vallejo between 28th and 29th Avenues, I turned to see this gnarly old cottonwood. You don’t see too many of these big cottonwoods in cities anymore. Their spreading roots wreak havoc on plumbing systems and crack driveways and patios. Their branches are weak and often break in storms.Nevertheless I love them and hope more of them grow in the Denver Metro area. Last year Boulder cut down the huge cottonwoods at 75th and Arapahoe so as to add a lane. It would have taken at least 2 people to circle one of those cottonwood trunks; their branches extended out over Arapahoe. I still get mad when I drive by that intersection.

But this post was supposed to be about trees making me happy. Let me try again.

At the end of last Saturday’s walkabout, I took 29th Avenue to 16th Street to the bridge over I-25 that ends at this example of Denver public art.I wrote about it last fall; that post begins and ends with a picture of the bridge. In the courtyard surrounding National Velvet, someone pasted a beautifully detailed paper tree. If you zoom in close enough on the left side of the tree’s canopy, you can almost read the signature: Barney, perhaps.Last Saturday, I visited the tree again. It’s had a difficult winter.There’s more snow now than tree.