Tag Archives: trees

Day 13, NaPoWriMo 2020

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

I wept this morning as crews cut down two large, beautiful, and perfectly healthy sweetgum trees in my neighbor’s yard.

Grief upon grief

Every day I wake to sounds of carnage: nerve-grating
whine of chainsaw, gut-churning growl of woodchipper,
people removing trees like a small child plucks dandelion
blossoms. But trees are not dandelions; their roots

intertwine and share the soil with countless species
of animals, plants, bacteria, fungi; their crowns feed
and house birds, squirrels, insects, and shade our homes
from summer’s glare. They anchor our landscapes, absorb

water from our roofs and driveways, and filter the air
we breathe. They delight our eyes with varied shape
and shade of limb and leaf, our ears with rustle and moan
of windsong. They outlive us, if we leave them

to their ancient work. Isn’t there already too much
dying in the world during this terrible time?

2020 National Poetry Month Poster-50

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Waiting, with lights

Posted on December 15, 2012 | 4 comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is an Advent tree, not yet a Christmas tree. Last Sunday we wove two types of lighted strands through its branches: warm incandescents, whose light reminds us of stars in the sky, and cool LEDs, whose light appears Advent blue and whose bulbs make us think of icicles.

For a week now the tree has cast a soft glow over the living room, the space in our house where we work and play. When I was a child, I would spend hours beneath our tree, staring up through the branches and imagining I was looking at the stars through the canopy of an evergreen wood. The enchantment of tiny lights has never entirely worn off; I suppose it’s one of the reasons I also love fireflies in summer.

Tomorrow we will add another layer of meaning to the tree in the form of ornaments or garland, depending on what box comes out of storage. When the children were small, we made paper chains for garland every year. They drew pictures or wrote on the strips of paper, and I tore off countless small pieces of tape for them to secure the ends of the links. It’s a kind of miracle, you know: simple circlets of paper interlock to form a chain of any length. Sometimes we each made our own chain before joining them together to create a single chain long enough to encompass the whole tree. You wouldn’t have seen it in Better Homes and Gardens, but our garland always seemed more beautiful to me than the most elegant tinsel.

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Waiting

Posted on December 7, 2012 | 2 comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe tree stands in a corner of the room, majestic in its solitude. It brings with it a wildness: the sharp tang of winter air, the soft contours of evergreen foliage. This tiny piece of northern forest seems doubly incongruous in a home in the Shallow South, its firred limbs a striking contrast against the tangle of leafless branches outside the backdrop of windows.

A horticulture professor has discovered that Fraser fir can be grown even here, at the extreme limits of its climate zone, if the soil conditions are ideal. Six days ago, this tree stood in a field of its fellows, just a couple rolling country miles down the road from here.

For the first week of Advent, it remains unadorned in our house, reminding us that life is always there, waiting, even when the world seems flat and grey. As the tree adjusts to the indoor temperature and humidity, we spend the week admiring the elegant beauty of its shape, getting to know the curve of its branches and the spiky softness of its needles.

This Sunday we will weave lighted strands through those branches, and the tree will sparkle as the night sky above the North Pole itself. But for now it is a shadowy and mysterious presence in darkness, a slim figure of patience in the light, exuding a faint air of balsam that I always associate with wonder.

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It’s snowing!

Posted on March 22, 2012 | 6 comments

Not really; it’s been in the upper 80’s (F) all week. But the ornamental pear trees that line the street  look a lot like they did a couple weeks ago (minus the tiny green leaves), when each branch was weighed down with a tiny mound of snow.

Each time a bird alights in or takes off from a tree, there’s a little shower of white petals. Last evening I heard small voices giggling and shrieking, “It’s snowing!” Down the street, two children were tossing twigs into the trees and dancing around in the resulting cascade.

For a few magical days, snowy white petals will swirl on the breezes and form car-blown drifts in the street. Despite the ridiculous heat, it really is only spring.

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Lazy Friday blog post: “Stuff about me” quiz

Posted on October 22, 2010 | 6 comments

Seeing as this is Friday, and I am lazy AND running late, I decided to take a short-cut. I hope it is at least mildly entertaining.

A Facebook friend “tagged” me with the following, but since I have no idea what that means or what to do with it, I decided to copy the quiz and use it for a blog post. I may not be tech-savvy, but I’m resourceful!

Please feel free to do the same. If you do so and want me to read it, just leave a comment to let me know where to find it. Have a great Friday!

1. What time did you get up this morning? Alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. Feet hit the floor ten minutes later.

2. How do you like your steak? Medium. Pink in the middle is nice.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Toy Story 3 at the dollar movies. (I don’t get out much.)

4. What is your favorite TV show? Don’t watch TV.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Someplace where I didn’t need a car.

6. What did you have for breakfast? Smoothie made with strawberries, hemp milk, whey protein, and flax seed oil. Yum!

7. What is your favorite cuisine? Malaysian, because it incorporates elements of so many other delectable cuisines.

8. What foods do you dislike? Too salty and too sweet.

9. Favorite Place to Eat? Gunan Tahan, Malaysian restaurant in Amity CT that is no more. Alas!

10. Favorite dressing? My friend Dawn’s homemade Italian.

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive? Toyota minivan with automatic sliding door on passenger side.

12. What are your favorite clothes? Loose and flowing, like robes or muu-muus.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Anywhere extraterrestrial

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? By definition it has to be both (I’m a double Libra, after all), but the empty half isn’t really of much use now, is it?

15. Where would you want to retire? Somewhere that I didn’t need a car.

16. Favorite time of day? Evening/late night (10 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. is my peak time.)

17. Favorite Season? Autumn

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Baseball

19. Who do you think will not tag you back? What is this “tag” of which you speak?

20. Person you expect to tag you back first? Again I ask, what is “tag”?

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? I’ll be thrilled to death if anyone even READS it.

22. Bird watcher? When they are in my field of vision, yes.

23. Are you a morning person or a night person? Isn’t that covered in #16?

24. Do you have any pets? Two cats: one middle-aged and very sweet, one young and very stupid.

25. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share? I’ve been nominated for the Nobel prize in bulls**ting.

26. What did you want to be when you were little? First a doctor, then a pilot, then an astronaut. Didn’t follow through on that too well, did I?

27. What is your best childhood memory? My relationships with trees, the big maple in the back yard and the ancient juniper at church camp in particular.

28. Are you a cat or dog person? Yes.

29. Are you married? Yes. (Is it just me, or are some of these questions pretty uninteresting?)

30. Always wear your seat belt? Yes, and my car doesn’t move until everyone else is wearing theirs as well.

31. Been in a car accident? A couple: one very traumatic in childhood, though no one was hurt, and one minor fender-bender (literally) in adulthood. I was not driving in either case.

32. Any pet peeves? “all about me” quizzes that ask stupid and uninteresting questions.

33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? Anything but anchovies, though I’m rather partial to a white pie with fresh tomato, fresh basil, and garlic.

34. Favorite Flower? Whatever is blooming where I am. In my garden right now that would be marigolds, mums, Verbena bonariensis, hyacinth bean, and roses.

35. Favorite Hobby(ies)? Reading, crocheting, writing, cooking, eating, talking.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant? Chipotle

37. How many times did you fail your driver’s test? Zero

38. From whom did you get your last email? I believe it was from a gentleman in West Africa who wanted to confirm my contact information so he could send me my inheritance.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Joseph-Beth Bookstore

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? Decided to answer this quiz

41. Like your job? The question is missing a subject and quite possibly a verb.

42. What’s your eye color? Gray/green with flecks of orange when I’m angry, or so my sisters tell me.

43. What was your favorite vacation? The time we went to Vail and I got to hike and read all day and we slept with the French doors wide open all night because there are no mosquitoes at that altitude.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? We all dragged our sorry tails to KFC buffet last night because everyone was too tired to cook. Does that count?

45. What are you listening to right now? My great-grandparents’ clock ticking in the living room and the distant roar of the interstate.

46. What is your favorite color? Periwinkle blue. The color of cornflowers (chicory)

47. How many tattoos do you have? Zero

49. What time did you finish this quiz? 9:17 a.m.

50. Coffee Drinker? Only socially.

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Muscle memories

Posted on April 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

The ornamental pear trees that line the streets in my neighborhood have been in bloom for about a week now. Some of the blossoms have begun dropping their petals; when the wind catches them, it seems as though it’s snowing. Small drifts of white petals line the driveways and sidewalks and tiny white whirlwinds swirl down the middle of the street. Despite the vast numbers of trees and petals, there aren’t enough to blanket the ground, even directly beneath the trees. Gives me a new appreciation for just how many snowflakes are involved in a measurable snowfall!

Yesterday was a beautiful day to be outside, and I was able to spend most of it working in the yard. My muscles are deliciously sore today from all the digging, crouching, and schlepping — the aches and twinges are a physical memory of activity so enjoyable that I cheerfully overdid it. All day long I’ll get these little messages from my body reminding me of a day so gloriously spent, and the remembering will be a pleasure in itself.

No Advil for me!

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Street trees

Posted on March 30, 2009 | Leave a comment

I live in one of those neighborhoods where the streets are planted with ornamental pear trees. As my SO noted last week, now is the only time of year when that makes any kind of sense: they are all in bloom at once, and the streets look as though they are lined with giant sticks of white cotton candy. It’s magical, almost surreal. I took a walk after dark this evening and was enchanted as I stood beneath one of those trees and looked up through the blossoms at a nearby street light.

Once the blossoms are done, the glossy, dark green leaves and upright habit of the pear trees are handsome, but the massed effect is monotonous. Although they turn vivid shades of red in the fall, they then drop millions of tiny not-quite-pears on the sidewalks. The decaying fruits gum up the treads of sneakers and bicycles and attract thousands of migratory birds, who in turn wreak havoc on parked cars and drop pear seeds everywhere.

While driving home this afternoon, I took a shortcut through a neighborhood whose street tree regulations do not call for such monocultural uniformity. Among the occasional blooming ornamental pears, I saw what appeared to be a cloud of pink smoke a block or so up the street. As I got closer I realized that this effect was produced by several redbud trees planted next to one another along the street. The trees were in bloom, and their tiny magenta blossoms, spread all along their dark branches, produced a translucent pink haze. The result was subtle, surprising, and utterly delightful.

In the wake of a recent outbreak of fire blight, our homeowners’ association revised the street tree regulations to permit a little more variety in our neighborhood. The redbud isn’t on the new list, but maybe I can take some street tree committee members for a drive and let the redbuds make a case for themselves.

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