The Austin, Texas, Mountain Cedar Page

At first, all I had been told about Austin's Mountain Cedars was that the pollen made the evening skies a beautiful purple and provided for amazing sunsets.  Liars!

Isn't that a lovely shade?

It turns out, that the tree is really a juniper, not a cedar.  The official Latin name is, Juniperus ashei. 

I studied a little Latin:

juni for "worthless" + perus for "plant" and ashei which is the word for "hateful."  Worthless plant, hateful.

For the first year, I was kind of like...

Could explain my grades that year.

I moved back to Fort Worth where the early cowpokes either strung-up or shot every mountain cedar caught north of the Brazos River; and so enjoyed October through March again, which was kind of like...

Yep.

But then I was transferred back to Austin a few years later, and by December, I was thinking like...

I have a moral duty to:
Kill.  These. Damned. Trees.

The company transferred me back to Fort Worth; then off to grad school in Wisconsin; back to Fort Worth; off to California; and back near Fort Worth again. 

Then, ten years ago, I was back in Austin, and the first October, I was like...

We have a moral duty to make these trees suffer!

By February, I was like...

My God!  The trees are attacking!

And like...

If war is what these trees want, then...

But after ten years of this, I'm like...

Gotta go!  We're doomed!