Here is a video taken by Klara in Georgia. As Monika described, we moved from a temperate climate to a tropical climate.

Our interns were just finishing a massive 2 day project, pruning Formosa Azaleas 5 meters high and removing wisteria and greenbriar vines, old wood and debris that had collected for 40+ years or as long as anyone can remember.

Here they are pulling away a particularly difficult vine, just as the rain came pouring down on to the live oaks, magnolias, and our seemingly small but intrepid landscape managers.

Even inside, trees are hard to miss and always nose in on the scenery.

Jana and Klara reading in the library at the Reid House Farm.

Yes, Georgia is the land of tall and magical trees. Here is a lovely footage of my favorite recording artist Eva Cassidy --- Tall Trees in Georgia. Her parents were from Georgia.

"Fields of Gold" and "Over the Rainbow" are also my favorites from 1996. The Washington Post commented that year that "she could sing anything — folk, blues, pop, jazz, R&B, gospel — and make it sound like it was the only music that mattered." She died the same year from metastatic melanoma, aged 33.

These recordings of Fields of Gold and Over the Rainbow, as well as Tall Trees in Georgia, are from one of her last performances at Blues Alley, Georgetown, earlier in the same year.

Tall trees in Georgia. They grow so high, they shade me so.
I'm sadly walking through the thicket I go.
The sweetest love I ever had I left aside
Because I did not want to be any man's bride.

My parents took me where ever I traveled out.
I traveled west and north and east and south.
When I grew older and married I would be,
I found my sweetheart, he would not marry me.

When I was younger the boys a-courtin' came around
But now I'm older and they're all settled down.
Young girls take warning and don't complain
And 'don't make moan,
For if you're fickle you'll soon be left alone.

Control your mind, my girl, and give your heart to one,
For if you love all men you'll sure be left with none.
And if perfection were to be found in mortal men
We'd soon grow tired and go off alone again.

Tall trees in Georgia. They grow so high, they shade me so.
I'm sadly walking through the thicket I go.

Here it is again from the Native American (Canadian) woman who wrote the music and the lyrics, Buffy Sainte-Marie. Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot Plains Cree First Nation Reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was adopted, growing up in Massachusetts, with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, a Wakefield, Massachusetts couple of Mi’kmaq descent.

--- Maggie O'Brien