Category Archives: Flowers, Trees & Gardens

SEASONS’ FAVORITES: Tree

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Blaga Tordorova’s Seasons’ Challenge

Fifth of Five: All Time Favorites

Link to Blaga (BrokenSparkles) to join the challenge and visit other bloggers.

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If you are viewing this from the home page, you will have to click on the post title so the poems will lay out properly. Thank you!

MY COLLECTION OF FAVORITES

I find that I am unable to choose an absolute favorite for anything on the list including the seasons. I am grateful for the changing seasons, for the abundant gifts of nature and my kitchen and for the treasured artists who enriched my life with their  varied talents. Thus, to pick a single all-time favorite is impossible. I decided to take “Trees” as the theme for this fifth and final phase of the challenge, using the theme to dictate what I include here.

WORD ~

trees – like us, they are deeply rooted in the earth and reach for the heavens; they change with the seasons as we change (grow) with the seasons of our lives; they give comfort, beauty, food and flowers; they offer their strength and inspiration; they are harbingers of peace …

QUOTE/S ~

The story of each stone leads back to the mountain. W.S. Merwin, American poet

♥

After an age of leaves and feathers someone dead thought of the mountain

as money and cut the trees that were here and the wind and the rain at night. It is hard

to say it.” W.S. Mervin, American poet

He is responsible for planting more than 800 species of palm trees on the Hawaiian island of Maui, but newly appointed US poet laureate W.S. Merwin, 83, has no illusions of botanical expertise. “I’m a complete amateur,” he said, “but I’ve loved growing things ever since I was a child” (oral communication, September 24, 2010). MORE [American Botanical Council]

POEM ~

TREE SONG

by

Jamie Dedes

Still for a moment the church bells

pealing the old canonical hours.

Still the lyric call of the muezzin.

Silence the sachar, minha, arivit.

Stay the wheels and the flying flags.

Let the Universal music resound,

unfetter prayers of primeval trees.

BOOK ~

TREE: ESSAYS and PIECES

by

Deena Metzger

“I AM NO LONGER AFRAID…” Deena Metzger.

Ms. Metzger is a poet and playwright, essayist and novelist, and a healing storyteller. I wish her work was around in time for my mom who died of breast and colon cancer. Trees: Essays and Pieces is Deena Metzger first healing book and it includes the play The Woman Who Slept With Men to Take the War Out of Them. She wrote the book to heal from her experience of cancer and mastectomy.

I love the brave picture above on a poster designed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, copyrighted and posted here under “fair use.” It’s also on the cover of Ms. Metzger’s book. You can order posters or postcards HERE if you care to. I don’t know if you can make it out, but Ms. Metzger had a tatoo done over her mastectomy scar. It’s a tree branch.

I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows.
There was a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered,
but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart.
Green leaves cover the branch, grapes hang there and a bird appears.
What grows in me now is vital and does not cause me harm. I think the bird is singing.
I have relinquished some of the scars.
I have designed my chest with the care given to an illuminated manuscript.
I am no longer ashamed to make love. Love is a battle I can win.
I have the body of a warrior who does not kill or wound.
On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree.

Excerpt from Tree: Essays and Pieces by Deena Metzger 

SONG ~

Trees – video above that you will have to click twice to view on YouTube. The words are from a poem of Joyce Kilmer ’s. The voice is that of the great Paul Robison.

MOVIE ~

“Trees are like people. They have souls. They have feelings.”

LEMON TREE, Isreali drama (2008)

This is a many-layered and moving story. In a sentence: In order to save her lemon trees, one determined woman fights the system and its powers but doesn’t win the battle.

ANIMAL ~

HONEY BEE

Trees and Bees need one another,

though I don’t know that technically a bee is considered an “animal.”

FLOWER ~

LILAC

Woody shrub or tree.

FOOD ~

LEMONS

So healthy, lovely, and good for drinks and dishes, both sweet and savory.

IMAGE ~

TREES

Photo and video credits ~ Trees video by upload to YouTube by  ; Lemon Tree upload to YouTube by ; honey bee, lilac, lemon, and tree photos courtesy of Morgue File.

Thanks again, Blaga! :-)

FILOLI ESTATE GARDENS

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Filoli is an outstanding example of the Anglo-American gardening style that was pioneered at the end of the nineteenth century by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll in British gardens and exemplified in the U.S. by designs of Charles A. Platt and Beatrix Farrand. MORE [Wikipedia]

This past Sunday when it was time to prepare a poem for Thursday’s post, I could hardly think of anything but my birthday visit to Filoli Estate, one  of the finest go-to places (peaceful, luxurious, artful) on the San Francisco peninsula. All I could do for a poem was this:

Bright apricot sun

Earnestly bursting on our day

From me these few words

♥ ♥ ♥  ♥

FILOLI GARDENS IN WOODSIDE, CALIFORNIA U.S.A.

SUNDAY WAS COLD, SUNNY, AND BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE SPRING

The exterior of the main Filoli building, which was used as the Carrington Manson on the television series Dynasty (1981-1989).

TAKE A LOOK HERE AT SOME OF THE FLOWERS.

Love and hugs to Rich and Karen from the Mominator.

Thank you!

GIVING THE GIFT OF A TREE

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Courtesy of Petr Kratochvil, Public Domain Pictures.net.

Guest blogger, Robert Rossel, Ph.D., Life Coach, rosselrob@aol.com, is making a difference and sharing the information here.  Rob has been doing this for Christmas for several years. We all love getting his “trees.” They’re not just for Christmas either. You can send them for any holiday or celebration.Thanks, Rob, for the gift of trees, your efforts, and for sharing the information. :-)

Rob writes: Yesterday I received an e-mail from Mokugift letting me know that I was an environmental “Hero” and had made a huge difference in fighting global warming.This came as a complete surprise to me! I had no idea that  sending friends and family a virtual tree as a Christmas gift would have had such an effect.
You see, instead  of getting caught up in the usual frenzy of buying and sending holiday gifts  and cards I decided to send them a tree instead,  and invited them to send one  to other people as well.  Well, it snowballed, and I ended up inspiring quite a few people to do it. Together we were instrumental in planting 134 trees and inspiring 97 people to do  our small bit in the fight against global warming.  Of course  this is not even a drop in the bucket, but imagine what would happen if collectively we got hundreds or even thousands of people into the act!
You want to find out how you can do it too?   It is quite simple.  You buy a virtual   tree (each tree costs only a dollar)  from Mokugift and/or send one to a friend as a gift, and a real tree will be planted in various part of the world where trees will do the most good in fighting global warming and reversing environmental degradation.
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You wonder how you can make a difference?  HERE is something you can do!
IT’S NOT TOO LATE!
Three more days until Christmas.
Red bow