Did you ever think how big trees get? I don't mean trees like giant Sequoias or redwoods, I mean everyday sorts of trees like oaks and maples and locusts and such.
Maybe it's because I live in Chicago -- the "city in a garden" that might as well be called the "city in a forest". There are trees just about everywhere, especially in the older residential neighborhoods. Some of those are over a hundred years old. But even walking down a major commercial street, you notice that even the younger trees are a couple of stories tall. The older ones can easily top four stories, and even then, those are not really old trees -- maybe twenty or thirty years old, which is nothing for a tree.
There's an ash tree outside my window that pretty much covers three out of four windows facing that direction. I'm on a high second floor (the first floor is all commercial spaces), and I can just see the top of it from my window. The top is up into the third story, so it's at least twenty-five or thirty feet tall, and it's not really an old tree.
There are a couple of locusts up in the next block that I can see from the front door that tower over the buildings -- they're easily forty feet tall. And the maple next door is just about level with the roof of the building -- a three-story apartment building with a high basement, making it almost four stories.
Sadly, I can't find any pictures online that give a good idea of what I'm talking about here, so you'll just have to use your imagination. Or look out the window.
Maybe it's because I live in Chicago -- the "city in a garden" that might as well be called the "city in a forest". There are trees just about everywhere, especially in the older residential neighborhoods. Some of those are over a hundred years old. But even walking down a major commercial street, you notice that even the younger trees are a couple of stories tall. The older ones can easily top four stories, and even then, those are not really old trees -- maybe twenty or thirty years old, which is nothing for a tree.
There's an ash tree outside my window that pretty much covers three out of four windows facing that direction. I'm on a high second floor (the first floor is all commercial spaces), and I can just see the top of it from my window. The top is up into the third story, so it's at least twenty-five or thirty feet tall, and it's not really an old tree.
There are a couple of locusts up in the next block that I can see from the front door that tower over the buildings -- they're easily forty feet tall. And the maple next door is just about level with the roof of the building -- a three-story apartment building with a high basement, making it almost four stories.
Sadly, I can't find any pictures online that give a good idea of what I'm talking about here, so you'll just have to use your imagination. Or look out the window.
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