One limb held a tire swing, just a big old car tire swinging on a rope. The other limb held the regular rope swing with a board for a seat.

Those old oaks can easily live to be 100 or more years old we know. Just imagine how many children grew up under its branches, swinging and playing. That fantastic shade and those huge piles of leaves in the fall. Besides that, those oak leaves are tough. Rake ’em up, pile ’em up. Jump on the pile, over and over again. Oh what fun.

That, I always thought, had to be one of God’s special trees. Like so many of his blessings, we never even stop to think about. My dad, as we grew up, taught us kids to stop, see and realize how very much for which we had to be thankful. Yes, even our trees.

The music of those leaves blowing and slapping in the wind and again as they rattle and blow on the street after falling. I always loved to rake leaves, pile and re-pile, letting the kids tumble and toss, wearing themselves and the leaves out.

As I watched my neighbor, Sue Drew, rake leaves the other day, I knew what I had to write about today. Many of the trees are bare now, exposing the empty bird nests, those happy robins always first to awake in the morning and the last to retire in the evening.

She’s also a mother and grandmother, both of us enjoying those leaves, and such memories, the beautiful shade they’d given us.

“Oh, raking them is just a job maybe to some. I like to think of all of the pleasure they’ve given us all summer,” she said.

Thank you, Sue, and many more happy memories.

Have too many problems and don’t know which way to turn? There is an old Japanese saying: “muddy water-stand still-becomes clear.”

God Bless, pass on those hugs now.

– Aunt Norie, P.O. Box 265, Tonganoxie 66086; auntnorie@att.net.