Happy Sunday! This week, for Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #397, host Anne from Slow Shutter Speed is looking for texture in images. Hope you enjoy my selection of photos and stories.

Earlier this year, I lost this tree. Not to disease or anything, no, my mom decided to chop this tree down, even after my many objections. I haven’t written about this tree being chopped down until now. I guess I’ve been processing it and busy dealing with the aftermath.

This flowering Asian pear tree was here when I moved into the my current home in 2017. When I began to garden, I used this tree to provide some shade from the blasting sun. I hated the fact that this tree shedded leaves like crazy in the fall but I never wanted it gone. Shade is important, especially in the summer.

My mom, on the other hand, was worrying about something that’s probably not going to happen. She was worried about the tree falling on the house when the tree is nowhere near the house. We even asked her coworker, who came to trim the tree for use. He said it’s highly unlikely.

Still, she paid a guy cash and now this tree is gone. There’s no more shade in the back garden and the back garden is just as bright and scorching as the front garden where the ground is either covered in rocks or it’s covered with concrete.

On my recent trip to a public garden, I saw this large cactus plant in the water-wise garden. Even though no water will ever be needed for this plant, I can’t see myself growing this.

Too spikey for my liking and I have just about enough spikey plants to last me a lifetime.

When I moved into my current home, the previous owners of the house left me a parting gift – a bunch of heritage raspberries in a corner of the backyard. If you’ve never seen heritage raspberries, it’s a plant that’s full of thorns. It was the point that I couldn’t fertilize the canes and the fruit got so small that it wasn’t edible.

Nah uh, no more thorny for me.

I finally removed the raspberry canes a few years ago and replaced it with a thornless variety in the front garden. Year after year, that thorny variety still came back and I occassionally would find it in my vegetable raised bed. I often will let it grow on unless it’s in the wrong place.

Finally, this is inside the White Cliff. I visited this spot when I took an OHV (off-highway vehicle) tour last year in Kanab, Utah. We arrived at the foot of this cliff after many twists and turns in the mountains. The hike from the foot of the mountain to the White Cliff didn’t take very long but the hike wasn’t easy. The trail was so full of sand that at times, I found myself sinking into the sand and had to reach for something to get back up.

One of the first things I did upon arriving was touching the walls of the cliff. The cliff is made from sandstone and over time, the wind eroded away the rock and dutifully deposited the sand in the same spot, forming the Great Chamber, which is quite a popular destination for off-road vehicles.