Another American Adventure: trees

Thursday, May 2, 2013

trees

What is it about trees, that makes them such a constant presence in our lives? I think that they must be like (guardian) angels.

Once again this year I'm captivated by this particular tree's bud-leaf transformation. One of the locals saw me photographing it last night and told me it was a hickory tree.

The spring pastel colors are everywhere now ...

... the dogwood blossoms are most enchanting ...

Jubilee taking a snooze ... (getting rested up for her big trip back to Florida).

2 comments:

BarbaraMay 2, 2013 at 6:11 PM
The trees here are bursting with spring green now. The weather is balmy and daffodils and jonquils and hyacinth and tulips are flowering in gardens. This is just the best ever time of year!

When are you leaving for Florida?
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beth cioffolettiMay 3, 2013 at 8:50 AM
It is all like magic, isn't it?

We're heading south on May 17th. Going to stop in South Carolina for a wedding.

Soaking up this wonderful spring weather while we can. Might be quite a while before we will see a cool morning. We're heading into hot, muggy, Hurricane Season!
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.