trees – Page 5 – don't confuse the narrator

walk on by

In Spain, I lived for many years in a house where the main heating was provided by a log stove, so whenever I went out walking, I was always on the look out for fallen pine cones. When dry, pine cones – or, perhaps, fir cones – are highly combustible and make it so much easier to get a fire started. Now, although I’m living in a house with central heating, the instinct to gather kindling and cones remains, and the recent storms have strewn much temptation in my path.

Today I succumbed.

Well, OK, it isn’t quite a pine cone, but I reckon it would burn just as well.

I should have resisted, but I’m afraid my attention was snagged by all those prickly wooden “petals” and it was impossible to walk on by. So now there’s a rather glorious branch of a monkey puzzle tree about three foot long standing in the corner of my room.

what are you waiting for?

The neighbour’s oaks are always among the last of the local trees to lose their leaves, but the terrific winds of a few nights ago left them practically bare. Yesterday was the shortest day, so now it’s downhill to summer.

Why, then, is the linden determined to hang on to her seeds? They have to go some time, so what is she waiting for?

And you? Are you planning to turn over a new leaf? Do you have a New Year’s resolution already prepared? Why aren’t you going ahead with it right now?

(And by “you”, I mean “me”, of course.)

summary

Yesterday, I wrote 229 words under the title summery II. Much of that post has been condensed into the following 14 words. Which is why this is titled summary.

Through the long hours
of the longest days,
the linden hums
with honeyed promises

summery II

Another summery picture to mark the fact that although yesterday was the longest day, today the sun will actually set later.**

As Rimbaud said in his poem Roman: Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bons soirs de juin! – lindens smell sweet on fine June evenings. What he didn’t say is that they smell sweet all day long.
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great oaks and giant redwoods

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!”
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