A poem.
Via Loren
Festival of the Trees #5
I’ve had such fun reading through and organising all the submissions. I hope you enjoy them too. Most had an accompanying illustration. For the few that didn’t I’ve selected something I thought appropriate. Please, posters concerned, let me know if you have any objection.
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My own contribution, and that of my two helpers pictured left, is some tree audio. Friend H and son A kicked through drifts of dry leaves, pushed past brittle foliage on branches, snapped twigs and stood (and crouched) with great forbearance while I recorded the sudden downpour thrashing on the leaves. Thank you H and A for the sound of trees! |
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Yes, suddenly, it’s autumn, as Bev notes on Burning Silo. |
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Larry Ayers views Bear Creek And Its Trees from ground level to get the full carpet-effct of the fallen leaves. His dog Tucker looked on tolerantly at this behaviour. Later in his walk he finds vast leaves on a tiny sycamore sapling and speculate on the possible cause of their scale. |
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And while we’re on the subject of the outsized, big leaf maple is the self-explanatory title of a post by the Dharma Bums. They’re sweet too, apparently. Their sap. The ones with big leaves. |
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A small leaf here, but one of many Fallen – leaves, death, seduction and the tempted Eve are woven together by Lorianne at Hoarded Ordinaries. |
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Death too haunts Sharon Brogan’s Snapshot Poem 04 October 2006 at Watermark. Yet I can’t help thinking that the bright scarlet-orange of the mountain ash berries in her picture show there’s brightness as well. |
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Colour, form and light – Backlit Ninebark by the botanizing Larry Hufford. |
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The frequent rains have enlarged the local swamps and the still water mirrors the emptiness above writes BodySoulSpirit in Family trees in October. She posts three images of trees from three different family members and muses on their symbolism. |
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In Understory Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries raises her eyes to the lower levels and honours the hangers-on. |
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So why do leaves change colour and get pushed off their parent trees? I thought I knew, but recent research as outlined by Jeremy in A Festival of Leaves threatens to overturn the received wisdom of my school biology lessons. Read more of Jeremy’s science writing at the Voltage Gate. |
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Jade of Arboreality (and the host of this Festival next month) has been Playing in the Pocono Forests and shows us it’s not only leaves that are in ruddy colour. |
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More mycology at Broad Meadow Brook, as seen by Leslee of 3rd House Journal This trunk with its mushroom footpegs looks like a ladder. |
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A sunset colour here, but perennial not autumnal. Joe Kissell presents The Golden Spruce – Tragic fall of a legendary tree posted at Interesting Thing of the Day. A highly unusual Sitka Spruce tree in British Columbia had golden needles and a conical shape, and was revered by nearby indigenous people. It was cut down by a logger-turned-environmentalist in a bizarre twist of illogic. |
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Another dead tree here, but what a whopper! For the story of this driftwood read Bev’s entry on Burning Silo. |
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From gone to going… John Ruberry of Marathon Pundit was at Great Smoky Mountains National Park and found bad news for Fraser Firs. |
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Needles drop too… in this case the needles of the Pinus Strobus. As well as pictures Cindy of Riverrim also gives a useful tip for measuring the approximate height of a tree. |
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Butuki’s post The Lungs of the Mountain God (at Laughing Knees) is included here for the beautiful pictures of larch and elfinwood and creeping pine included in it. Read it too, for the exquisite writing of the account of a walk (walk?!) up Kurobe Peak and the non-tree-related pictures. The shot chosen to represent the post here is called “Kurobe krummholz” and, curious, I wanted to know what a krummholz is. What an excellent word. |
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Another great word, another great picture and another great entry from Larry Hufford at botanizing: The guttating horsetail. The post qualifies for inclusion because of its references to the now-extinct tree horsetails, in case you were wondering. If, like me, you hadn’t come across guttation, read to the end to find out what it is. And read the comments to find out why the horsetail makes an excellent pan-scrubber. |
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This weirdly-angled trunk is a yellow birch, one of several photographed by Dave Bonta of Via Negativa on his recent return to Bear Heaven in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest. He mentions its orogenous zone in passing as well as a legendary purple dye known as orchil. More new words for my list. Although Dave found some aspects of the trip disappointing his photographs never fail to delight. For the swiftly-connected there’s a slideshow here. |
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What a spectacular view! Find out in Appreciating Nature why for year Nneka just couldn’t appreciate it, as posted at Balanced Life Center. |
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Despite loving climbing trees and loving mangoes and having been in places with an abundance of mango trees I’ve never actually been in the branches of one. Now I know what I’m missing thanks to the poem Midday at Very Like A Whale. Mmmmmm. Lick that juice before the bees find you. |
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At Naturally Connected Wendy tells us why Burlingame calls itself the “City of Trees” and shows us how large “heritage” trees are protected – wherever they may be growing. |
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Here’s another big tree – sent in by Julian of Bubble Brothers. The post is called Gather ye rosebuds, &c, – endangered species and concerns both this majestic Cornus kousa as well as an apparent wine-lake. The latter is related to Julian’s current job as a wine merchant. In his submission he says I’m certainly no photographer, and wasn’t able to make gardening pay, but here’s a tree that takes some of the sting out of having to serve Mammon. Plant ya now, dig ya later! I imagine the contents of Mammon’s bottles are quite efficacious in sting-relief too. |
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Tane mahuta is the last and perhaps the biggest of our big tree section. The god of the forest, the son of the sky father and earth mother, he ripped them apart allowing life to flourish. Lucy Kempton met the forest god’s forest incarnation while in New Zealand, and also found his grandeur in a rather more prosaic setting. |
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In this section we see some entries where words are foremost, starting with the Ballad of Penelope from Alan Van Dine of Light Verse for a Heavy Universe. Penelope dreams of finery while sprucelike, she lingers silently, contemplating the sorry fates of family members. Her story has a happy ending. Well, I think it does. But I can’t be sure. |
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One poet highlights another – Juliet Wilson posts Three haiku on Trees by Sandy Hiss on her blog Bolts of Silk. |
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Read A landscape of holes where things once were. Chris Clarke writes at Creek Running North and he’s one of the best writers on the web. This post transcends summary by me. Just read it. |
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This last entry isn’t really about trees at all. It’s actually about the River Ribble in the north of England. I’ve included it for three reasons – firstly the delightful drawing of the seagulls and the sun making friends which contains trees; secondly it’s a piece of good environmental news and thirdly the blog links to Global Voices. I’m the host. I’m allowed to be biased. |
The next host will be Arboreality – Tree Blogging. Send links to Jade by email: jadeblackwater [at] brainripples [dot] com to arrive with her no later than Nov. 29
I’m off to Hungary
And I make absolutely no apology for reposting a poem I’ve blogged before, actually more than once, by a Hungarian poet…
The Poem of Darkness
Once more, the vigil season!
Broad pen-strokes on my sheet look grim.
Night’s rust-juice floods the gardens,
by six full to the brim.
damp oozes from the mouldering trees,
you muse on how much time
you’ve left. Your foot stops dead, in fear
of stumbling into a tomb…
But tell me: have you ever let
a snow-white sugar-cube soak up
dark liquid, dipped in the bitter night
of coffee in its cup?
Or watched how the dense liquid,
so surely, so insidiously,
will seep up through the white cube’s
pure, crystalline body?
Just so the night seeps into you,
slowly rising, the smells
of night and of the grave all through
your veins, fibres, cells,
until one dank brown evening,
so steeped in it, you melt and sink –
to sweeten, for some unknown god,
his dark and bitter drink.Dsida Jeno, 1938
translated by George Gomori & Clive Wilmer
There’s no sugar lump on my saucer above – sugar-dipping is not a domestic activity. I’m looking forward to exploring the cafés of Budapest as recommended by Karen, who isn’t there, and Maria, who is, and dipping many a lump.
Then it’s off to a small village on the shore of Lake Balaton for the Internet Hungary 2006 Conference at which, on Wednesday, I am talking about Global Voices and citizen journalism.
And now I must go and start packing. I notice that I have only 33 30 minutes before I must leave.
I'm off to Hungary
And I make absolutely no apology for reposting a poem I’ve blogged before, actually more than once, by a Hungarian poet…
The Poem of Darkness
Once more, the vigil season!
Broad pen-strokes on my sheet look grim.
Night’s rust-juice floods the gardens,
by six full to the brim.
damp oozes from the mouldering trees,
you muse on how much time
you’ve left. Your foot stops dead, in fear
of stumbling into a tomb…
But tell me: have you ever let
a snow-white sugar-cube soak up
dark liquid, dipped in the bitter night
of coffee in its cup?
Or watched how the dense liquid,
so surely, so insidiously,
will seep up through the white cube’s
pure, crystalline body?
Just so the night seeps into you,
slowly rising, the smells
of night and of the grave all through
your veins, fibres, cells,
until one dank brown evening,
so steeped in it, you melt and sink –
to sweeten, for some unknown god,
his dark and bitter drink.Dsida Jeno, 1938
translated by George Gomori & Clive Wilmer
There’s no sugar lump on my saucer above – sugar-dipping is not a domestic activity. I’m looking forward to exploring the cafés of Budapest as recommended by Karen, who isn’t there, and Maria, who is, and dipping many a lump.
Then it’s off to a small village on the shore of Lake Balaton for the Internet Hungary 2006 Conference at which, on Wednesday, I am talking about Global Voices and citizen journalism.
And now I must go and start packing. I notice that I have only 33 30 minutes before I must leave.
Frizzy arboretum
This month’s Festival of the Trees is being hosted by Lorianne at Hoarded Ordinaries, so I suppose it’s a hoarded arboretum. It’s full of links to gorgeous words and images, beautifully illustrated by Lorianne’s own pictures.
Next month the trees will be holding their festivities here (one of the main reasons I reconstituted the blog so as to give them somewhere to gather). I love the “what we’re looking for” instructions:
For the purposes of the Festival, we’re defining trees as any woody plants that regularly exceed three meters in height, though exceptions might be made to accommodate things like banana “trees” or bonsai. We are interested in trees in the concrete rather than in the abstract, so while stories about a particular forest would be welcome, newsy pieces about forest issues probably wouldn’t be. The emphasis should be on original content; we don’t want to link to pieces that are 90% or more recycled from other authors or artists.
The Festival of the Trees seeks:
• original photos or artwork featuring trees
• original essays, stories or poems about trees
• audio and video of trees
• news items about trees (especially the interesting and the off-beat)
• philosophical and religious perspectives on trees and forests
• scientific and conservation-minded perspectives on trees and forests
• kids’ drawings of trees
• dreams about trees
• trees’ dreams about us
• people who hug trees
• people who make things out of trees
• big trees
• small trees
• weird or unusual trees
• sexy trees
• tree houses
• animals that live in, pollinate, or otherwise depend on trees
• lichens, fungi or bacteria that parasitize or live in mutualistic relationships with trees
So get creative with the woody plants (audio of trees, anyone?) and send any contribution for consideration to: festival [dot] trees [at] gmail [dot] com. The deadline is 30 October, the festive forest appears the very next day on the first of November.
This morning
Dew is perennial; unlike rain, which comes and goes, dew is a daily occurrence. It’s like grace, arising regardless of our merit.
I was searching for a counterweight to the world’s towering edifices of greed, hatred and delusion… A place of light in the world’s swamping darkness. A tiny light barely visible through the trees. A light that was carefully nurtured, lovingly protected, and would not go out. Light, like a witness, like an example of what the world could be.
Satisfied mind
How many times have you heard someone say,
“If I had his money, I could do things my way.”
But little they know, it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.
Once I was living in fortune and fame,
Everything that I dreamed of to get a start in life’s game.
Then suddenly it happened, I lost every dime,
But I’m richer by far with a satisfied mind.
‘Cause money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old,
Or a friend when you’re lonely,
Or a love that’s grown cold.
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times,
Compared to the man with a satisfied mind.
When life has ended, my time has run out,
My friends and my loved ones I’ll leave, there’s no doubt.
But one thing for certain
When it comes my time,
I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind.
frizzyLogic 