Winter Benefit

I always think of winter as cold and bleak but to tell the truth, winter displays the beauty of trees just like spring, summer and autumn. In winter I can see the shapes of trees. I can see the elegant pattern of the branches and twigs. Some trees are columnar or pyramidal or as round as a lollipop. Elm branches droop down so gracefully. Oak trees bend their branches to flex the bark and show their gnarly strength. Last night I left work about 4:30, almost the same time the sun was leaving the sky for the night. There is a pair of big old cottonwood trees near our parking lot. I'm not a good judge of height but I'm guessing they are about 80 feet tall. The twin cottonwoods are next to the highway sound barrier wall and aren't they about 20 feet high? The wall came up to about one quarter of the way up the trunk. The sun was very low in the sky. The 4 story building in which I work blocked most of the sun so only the top 10 feet or so of the branches were illuminated. The lower part of the trees looked black and white and 2 dimensional. The illuminated crown of the trees looked beautifully brown and rusty colored and appeared to be three dimensional. I like looking at trees during the edges of the day when only the tree tops can see the sun.