A Charlie Brown Maple

12/1/16 colored pencils, ink

I’ve shown you many traffic circles in and around my neighborhood, but I’ve never shown you this one – the one closest to my house. It’s only half a block away. The reason I’ve never sketched it before today is that it has such a small, spindly tree growing in it that I always think of it as a Charlie Brown tree. For the longest time, I wasn’t even sure what kind of tree it is as it hardly had enough leaves to identify it.

It turns out it’s just a late bloomer. This past spring and summer it leafed out fully, and now that most of the other trees have dropped their leaves in a soggy brown mess, this little maple is just starting to turn. It’s lovely to see the bright spot of color at the intersection where I turn every day.