Do you remember how our heroes left the path against Gandalf's advice and ended up lost in Mirkwood?  (I'm writing about The Hobbit, of course.)  Finally, they decided that Bilbo would have to climb a tree in hopes of finding a landmark to steer toward, and our less than intrepid hobbit summoned his courage and clambered up through the scratchy limbs until "he poked his head above the roof of leaves" and "saw all round him a sea of green, ruffled here and there by the breeze."

Well, that's how I felt on Friday morning when I started summer pruning our largest peach tree.  Luckily for me, the tree is short enough that the job required no climbing, but the leaves were so dense that I had to creep underneath and then pop my head up in little openings.  I could almost imagine that I was parched and starving, perched atop a tree in the canopy of Mirkwood --- maybe that's why I was so hungry for lunch.