Giethoorn in Netherlands has no roads or any modern transportation at all, only canals. Well, and 176 bridges too. Tourists have to leave their cars outside of the village and travel here by foot or boat by. So you can probably imagine how peaceful it is here.
it amuses me to see people being surprised/impressed/amused by this setup, because it’s extremely common on the plains. if you don’t plant a windbreak, your heating and cooling bills are huge, and storms do things like throw the lawnmower through the living room window, take the roof off, or cake the entire north side of the house with six inches of solid ice.
evergreens remain bendy even in the coldest weather, so – wait, no, not the coldest. i remember when i was a kid it got down to like -45 and the norway pines around my house were cracking like gunshots as the sap froze.
maples, incidentally, make that noise around -20f, and i hear it at least once every winter here in southern minnesota. but i only ever heard norway pines make it that one time.
so anyway that’s why we plant pine trees around our houses. because otherwise the wind would freaking kill us.
On the other hand, as someone who also grew up on the prairies (even further north - northern Canada), I STILL actually think things like “never talk to me or my 42 trees again” when I see this stuff from above because it looks funny that way.
