My neighborhood lost another stately oak tree today in the rush to tear down small, old houses and build big, new houses. Seeing the stump of the tree reminded me of a poem I love, one which you may think is trite and overused. But I’d like to share it with you anyway: Continue reading
The title of today’s post is best read in a British accent, a la Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In that movie, there’s a scene set in the Middle Ages in which men are hauling carts through a village calling, “Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.” The plague has hit, and the men are hauling away the dead. Now, in case you have been hiding under a rock for the last several decades or irreverent, comedic farce isn’t your preferred movie genre, you need to understand that nothing about Monty Python is serious. So try to imagine the humor of the scene that ensues:
A man is trying to get his elderly relative onto the cart, despite the fact that the elderly man, though frail, is still very much alive. He keeps protesting, “I’m not dead yet.” But the younger man doesn’t want to miss the opportunity of the carts coming through the village and have to wait until the next one.
Well, that phrase, “I’m not dead yet” has been running through my head all morning, thanks to a visit from an agricultural extension agent to check out some dead and ailing trees at our place in the mountains. Continue reading
Some of you may have wondered what kind of tree is pictured at the top of my blog. It’s called a Palo Verde tree, and it’s the state tree of Arizona.
I took several photos of this tree when I visited the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix three years ago, including the one in the blog’s header and this one below:
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| A Palo Verde tree at the Desert Botanical Gardens, Phoenix |
The tree transfixed me. Born and bred in the southeast, I’m accustomed to tall pines, giant oaks and maples, and abundant magnolias, cherry trees and more. But what had me spellbound about this tree was its green trunk. I had never seen such a color on a tree trunk in my life. Flower stems are supposed to be green, sure, but tree trunks? In my part of the world, tree trunks are brown. Continue reading
Two weekends ago, I visited St. Paul, Minnesota for the first time. I had a wonderful time seeing the sights, including the stunning St. Paul Cathedral and railroad magnate James Hill’s house on Summit Avenue.
Although my husband and I apparently brought the heat of the South with us when we came, there was still a stubborn remnant of what had been a 60-foot pile of snow that the plows built in the Sears parking lot over the winter. The St. Paul Pioneer Press even covered the story of the snow pile in the paper, which is how I knew what I was looking at when we happened to drive by the Sears parking lot later that day. My southern-girl mind can’t quite wrap itself around the idea of snow surviving a 90-degree day. But then, I’m also used to snow being white, not black from road scrapings and other dirt and debris that made up the remnant of St. Paul’s snow. Continue reading
I’ve been hard at work this week on an art project that will (I hope) be a gift for one of my nephews. He’s graduating from high school next week, and I’m a very proud aunt, despite having nothing to do with his success in high school. In fact, one time when I was visiting, he asked me how much math I had taken in school (I minored in it in college), and I told him I had forgotten most of the math I had learned, which, unfortunately, meant that I was useless when it came to helping him with the particular algebra-trig or calculus problem he was working on.
But I digress, and I don’t have time to digress. The gift is something for his college dorm, unless it ends up looking like something a 1st grader made (with apologies to any 1st graders reading this – I’m sure your art projects are fabulous).
Because I procrastinated in getting started on the project, I’m less than a week away from having to finish it and am spending several hours each day working on the tiny little details that make up the whole work. I’m sure I’m learning a great lesson in patience, but I also find myself wondering whose dumb idea it was to plan out such an complicated piece. Oh, yeah. Mine. Continue reading
The Flourishing Tree 