Wildflowers and grasses
dwarf my three-year oak.
The spring breeze whispers:
Patience! Time will tell.
Of course the tree in the picture isn’t the “three-year oak”. (Though I think the little one would be quite a bit taller if it hadn’t been accidentally strimmed a couple of times in its first year!)
The photo is of one of the trees on the neighbouring plot.
They tower over our greenhouse and when the wind blows in autumn, acorns skitter across the flat roof and I am tempted to run like Henny Penny to warn everybody that “the sky is falling!”
Writing this, it occurred to me that although my family are used to seeing me running around like a headless chicken, the Spanish villagers might not know the story of Chicken Licken. As usual, though, Google is my friend, and has quickly provided me with a list of the brave companions from the Spanish story: Pollito Pito, Gallina Fina, Gallo Malayo, Pato Zapato, Ganso Garbanzo and Pavo Centavo; I particularly like Chickpea Goose.
And now back to where this post was supposed to be heading:
My friend Sue Butler is spending this month up in Scotland as poet-in-residence at Benmore Gardens as part of the Walking with Poets project. (Lucky bugger!!)
One element of her residency is to organise a collection of 150 poems to mark the 150th anniversary of the sierra redwood avenue at Benmore.
She’s looking for four-line poems that have some connection with trees (e.g. the pie you make with fruit from your apple tree, the shade of a pine you sat under while on holiday in Tuscany…) but she’s particularly interested in pieces that celebrate “the glory of trees and things tree-related”. So, if any of you have any pieces that fit that description, please follow the link above and post them over on the Benmore blog.
Do pass the word about what’s happening at Benmore: their blog has a link to the FaceBook page, too, and the Scottish Poetry Library are using the twitter hash tag #gardenpoet.
don't confuse the narrator 