Grandfather maple

I don’t really have a description to go along with this picture of our backyard maple, other than, “isn’t this just an awesome tree?” I hope he doesn’t mind the indignity of the bubble wrap belt – put there to thwart Winter, who is better at climbing up trees than back down them, we discovered.

We measured the girth of the tree to see if a cat barrier I found on the web would fit it, and discovered that it’s about thirteen feet around. We think it’s a silver maple, and it’s probably at least as old as the house itself if not older.