Category Archives: tree

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Why, mom?

I am going through photographs. This is Elwha before Christmas. “Why stick with lights, mom? What is it for?” Good question.

“I still do not understand the stick with lights and branches. But I love you anyhow, mom.”

Well, the stick with lights was ok when it got knocked over by young curious cats Elwha and Sol Duc. And I added four branches, but not a whole tree. I was traveling anyhow, so I did not want a formerly live tree.

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The AntiDating Patch II

Gosh, again? Once again I am giving up on dating, because, well…. I just cannot even IMAGINE beginning to share my past life. Heh. I suppose I could do one of those “We never talk about the past” relationships, but BLEAGH. Sorry, boring.

So, I quit. As I wrote in The AntiDating Patch, people are contrary beasts and nothing makes them more interested then being engaged/and/or/quitting dating. How do I get around this? Wearing the PATCH(Tm) is not enough. (I chose itsy bitsy country of origin of my choice, just FYI, not the boxers and ick, not the speedo).

Quitting won’t work. I will be hounded. My microbiome will start howling and send out pheromones to the other microbiomes and people will gather round. No! I say, No!

Better to date. Hmmm. I think I will date the birds in my yard. The male deer are a bit spiky for my taste, a little scary to get close to. I like the raccoons, they are VERY good at growling and protect their young. The coyotes are shy but I’ve seen them within a block and by my former clinic. Also one on three legs by the hospital. I wonder if he was considering the ER? I find great blue herons fascinating and wish that I could fly and land in trees. I could date a tree, right? Be anything you want to be? At one point I was so fed up with people that I decided to be a tree.

There. I will peel the AntiDating Patch off in a week and date the local flora and fauna. A week of the patch will reinforce my resolve and then I can go moon at trees, or a blue heron, or a coyote.

Phew, problem solved and plan laid. I won’t have to explain my life at all, at least not in English. I have had a blue heron circle back to land in a tree when I was trying to talk blue heron. The heron looked pretty fierce, I am afraid that what I am saying is probably an insult. It’s easy to pick up the nasty slang in another language. Maybe they will teach me if they sense my deep and positive intentions. I hope so, don’t you?

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Take down

This is a beautiful living cedar.

Unfortunately, the trunk, twenty feet high, had split in half in high winds. So now it was a very dangerous very tall living cedar that is going to come down and is right next to a house.

An expert was consulted. He said the tree could not be taken down intact. Each of the four tall trunks would have to come down individually. This is terribly dangerous, because felling trees is dangerous enough, but when you are up IN the tree, it is worse.

Gear for the take down.

There are four men and me. I am there with a camera. I do not help at all, I just try to stay well out of the way.

I am filming with a zoom lens from a nearby hill. They are trying to control the direction of the fall. Not on me or the house or any of them.
One down, three to go. When the top starts falling, it accelerates very quickly and crashes. He is trying to stay out of the way.
Going up to attach the cable high up to guide the fall direction.
Way up.
The falls take out smaller trees, but are controlled. It is raining.
Two trunks left.
Studying trunk three.
One left.
The last one is down. The trunk is still alive, with the split.
A closer view of the split trunk.

When the last trunk fell, it swung towards me and they shouted “Run!” It had slipped of the trunk and can’t be controlled as well even though there was a cable and a machine pulling in the desired direction. I ran and I am still here, thankfully.

Clean up on another day and the cedar goes to the sawmill.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: WAR. I wish we were all just working and there was no war.

No names or faces, because you know, those loggers are shy and wild, right?

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hat trick cat tree

I am not sure that the photograph really fits the prompt, the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sleekit. But maybe a yelling rubber chicken is appropriate. I start my tree this year with a bare stick with a fork in it.

I add lights to my stick.

I add ornaments to my stick.

The cats promptly knock it over and break some.

I remove delicate ornaments and get out the plastic and soft ones.

I finally add four branches from my cedar.

This is my adult children’s fault. They told me not to get a live tree. I figured that a dead one is legit, right?

Pretty sleekit, right?

But mom, what is for?

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tree time

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is perpetuity. Trees have a different time sense then we do. They send electrical messages like we do, but they are slower. Still, the tree can change it’s leaves within hours, to taste bad or poison a pest. I wonder if we seem fast and short lived and impatient to them.

Here is my friend Simon Lynge’s Perpetual Now:

Simon Lynge Perpetual Now
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Feathers

This is the final poem in my Falling Angels Dream Poetry series.

Some people say there are

Angels among us

I have faith in birds
I search for a nest
Hummingbird nest
the size of a nut
tiny, lined with spiderwebs
I love the herons too
great blue heron
flying lands in a tree
above me
I look through my mechanical eye
zoom in click click
and there is another
at the tree top
two in a tree
I move around
and there – one drops down
one flies
I am not distracted
a nest
a six foot nest
blessed
I move away gently

I wander back by the tree
gently
in the morning
in the evening
not one
not two
two in this tree
two in that
one in another
as many as five in a tree
six foot wing spans
a rookery of winged beings

angels among us
and why would we think
they would look like us?

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grounded

Poem: grounded

grief is an ox
that stands in the room with me
and overshadows
everything

no
grief
is a plow
pulled by an ox
I try to guide it
in the furrows

no
grief is the heavy ground
the plow turns it
the ox pulls
I guide it
in the furrows

no
I am grieving
I let it be close
I don’t push it
in to an ox
in to a plow
in to the earth
I let it in
I grieve