Dru Trahan, a member of the Temple Terrace Garden Club, sent a fun email recently:

“About a year ago, a fellow garden club member asked me to help create an educational brochure of trees for Temple Terrace,” she wrote. “YAWN!”

Dru loves taking pictures, but she’d never even thought of focusing on trees. “Not really something that made me jump out of bed in the morning, grab my camera and head out the door.”

But she agreed to the project, and now she looks at the world in a whole new way.

“I’m much wiser and more appreciative of the value and beauty that trees add to our community,” she wrote. “I now see beautiful trees all over, just begging me to photograph them.”

As part of the project, the club sponsored a Trees of Temple Terrace photo contest. They got 32 submissions and had two winners in each of three categories:

Most Representative of Temple Terrace Category: Lani Czyzewski- First Place; Al Latina- Second Place (below is his photo of cypress trees)

Most Showy Flowering Tree Category: Elia Wilkinson- First Place (a chickasaw plum tree, shot in September, below), and Susan Schubert- Second Place

Most Creative/ Artistic Category: Dru Trahan - First Place (yay!!—that’s her photo of a sand oak canopy at the top of the post); Jane Adamson - Second Place (“Reflections on the River”, below)

You can see all of the winners this month at the Temple Terrace Public Library.