maple tree bud burst
Photo by J. Harrington
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Recently, we learned that an artist, Katie Holten, has created a tree alphabet and a book About Trees. With luck, and maybe some pleading, we'll get a copy of her book for Father's Day this year or maybe our upcoming birthday. That seems like a reasonable follow-on to reading Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees. We have now put that back near the top of our "to be read" stack, in honor or Arbor Month. If we get really lucky, there'll be enough warm, sunny days this month that we'll be able to finish "Hidden Life" on the screened porch without developing frost bite.
oak tree bud burst
Photo by J. Harrington
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Our hopes about warmer days have been strengthened by the fact that the local oaks have finally experienced bud burst, sometime since the weekend past. We'll enjoy watching leaf out all month long. And, since today we also saw, while walking the dogs, the first dragonfly of the year, we'll look forward to seeing more of them. Another sign of warmer days.
To return to Katie Holten and her tree alphabet, she's Irish. That makes us wonder how much of her tree font development may have been influenced by the Early Medieval Irish alphabet "Ogham." There are so many things we didn't know, and even more that we don't know we don't know because we haven't learned enough to ask the necessary questions.
I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land
By Rita Dove
Life's spell is so exquisite, everything conspires to break it.
Emily Dickinson
It wasn't bliss. What was blissbut the ordinary life? She'd spend hoursin patter, moving through whole daystouching, sniffing, tasting . . . exquisitehousekeeping in a charmed world.And yet there was alwaysmore of the same, all that happiness,the aimless Being There.So she wandered for a while, bush to arbor,lingered to look through a pond's restive mirror.He was off cataloging the universe, probably,pretending he could organizewhat was clearly someone else's chaos.That's when she found the tree,the dark, crabbed branchesbearing up such speechless bounty,she knew without being toldthis was forbidden. It wasn'ta question of ownership—who could lay claim tosuch maddening perfection?And there was no voice in her head,no whispered intelligence lurkingin the leaves—just an ache that grewuntil she knew she'd already lost everythingexcept desire, the red heft of itwarming her outstretched palm.
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