Palm Trees – Visions of Tropical Paradise While Living in Snowy Winter Country
on January 23rd, 2012 at 5:34 pmAn Iowa native born & raised there who also raised my kids there, I lived in Texas for about 20 years before moving back to the Midwest, specifically to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in November 2010.
Moving from Iowa to Texas was a culture shock due to real live palm trees among a variety of other things. I LOVE trees. A palm tree, real, photographed or artistically rendered, is an internationally recognized symbol for a tropical paradise full of romance and relaxation.
Palm trees were a dream of warmth and sunshine while scraping dense layers of ice from the car windshield during Iowa ice storms in a typical winter workday for many years before I left for warmer weather in 1989.
While living in the sub-tropics of Houston, palm trees were an every-day every-where visual that blended into the background of traffic, variety of everlasting greenery and urban sprawl. Oppressive heat and humidity – hours upon hours of traffic snarls – a creative and artistic mind – frozen winter wastelands from my Midwest life of 40 years combined with the sub-tropics – results: a frozen palm tree oil painting … which became the first of many whimsical palm trees first in oil paints then in digital pixels, watercolors & India inks.
See other designs available in my Zazzle Shop: TreePainter.
Advertising palm trees are generally tall, graceful and elegant in magazines, movies and picture postcards. Marketing is realistic in presenting palm trees to us with their most romantic and best face forward.
BUT, Houston, Austin, Galveston and many other Texas cities are also full of other palm tree varieties which are quite lovely – many resembling a large or gigantic bush on a huge knarled stick to this artist’s Midwestern eye. The Dwarf Palmetto (Sabal Minor) is a favorite of mine. They resemble fans flowing from a fountain. These exotic trees planted in the middle of the road median brings an exotic but calming effect to Richmond Avenue among other major Houston traffic arteries. Fan type palm leaves radiate like sun rays in a child’s drawing. Feather type palms remind me of feathers, fern leaves or miniature weeping willows. See Sun Palm Trees website for information and pictures of various palm trees.