Thanks. It really stood out, in the only patch of light filtering through the trees.

One of the two of us agrees with you.

Both pictures have their merits, but I think I like the close-up best.

Seems that this photo could convince almost anyone that traveling by bicycle is awesome.

Great shot and beautiful flower!

Remember to roll needles in your fingers. Fir needles are flat and spruce have several sides.

It's a barn quilt on an elevator.

Yes, that looks right now that you’ve steered me in the right direction. I was surprised how much difficulty I had finding illustrations of spruce cones. Also surprised I hadn’t known that spruce cones hang down, while fir cones grow upward. At first I was thinking it was a fir.

It feels like a pretty self-selecting community, and one we’d be happy to select ourselves into also. Sort of a blue islet in the Red Sea.

Probably a Norway spruce.

Good to see Oberlin continues to uphold the values it was founded under. It had always been a bastion of equality. It also has an excellent music program where one of my students will be studying next year. I’m happy to see he will get to live in such a great community.

I bet squirrels eat the nuts.

Good advice!

I don't know them well, but the leaves looked very "buckeyeish" to me. Some internet searching and I found flowers that kind of matched your photo, but not native to N. Ohio. Your photo has huge stamens that I am not familiar with.

A few strays are found as far north as here in Dayton. Most are in the southeast. There is another species with a really spotty distribution in the southwest and Central America if I remember right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxodium_distichum