In All the Wrong Places…
If you know, you know.
To cheer myself up, I’m going to do a photo dump of my plant children. There are a couple of surprises this spring.
©️2024, itsamyisaid.com, all rights reserved.
In All the Wrong Places…
If you know, you know.
To cheer myself up, I’m going to do a photo dump of my plant children. There are a couple of surprises this spring.
©️2024, itsamyisaid.com, all rights reserved.
I wrote about William last fall. He has been doing his thing all winter, and he withstood a tornado. Although he did shed a few limbs, he seems unscathed overall.
This week William has decided to participate in the pollination of the entire neighborhood. The winds are a bit gusty, so William is trying to populate everything, basically. My next-door neighbor asked me today what kind of tree he is. I could tell she was annoyed by all of his spring activities – i.e. dropping seed pods. I told her he is a Willow Oak and many years ago, my mother thought her beloved Birch trees were dropping these pods, so she had them all cut down. It turns out, William was dropping the pods. My mother was upset about that for many years. She didn’t like William. William is a big boy, it would take a crane and many thousands of dollars to remove him. So William stays, and the bigger he gets, the more seeds drop. Everywhere. You can’t go outside without getting rained on by seed pods these days. They clog rain gutters, they form piles of tumbleweed looking things, and they get under your wiper blades. I think birds use them for their nests, though. But they can’t take a bath in the birdbath because it’s filled with William’s pods.
I was out front fussing with the clematis this morning when two (other) neighbors walked past and talked amongst themselves about these pods being everywhere. I didn’t say a word, except a good morning when the greeting was offered to me. I kept my eyes down and focused on my task. When I was done, I walked in my house and shook my hair. Twelve seed pods fell out. Thanks, William.
Oh – one more thing: for the past several years, there has been a toad living in my backyard. When I had all the English ivy eradicated last fall, I was worried that the toad might have been adversely affected. I am happy to report that Toady McToaderson is back and apparently in fine health. Today is the first day I have heard him singing his dulcet sounds to the lady toads. Welcome back, Toady.
©️2024, itsamyisaid.com, all rights reserved
They’re so stinking cute! It’s going to rain for the next couple of days so I think these blossoms are going to be gone soon. Keeping that in mind, I wanted to capture a few more images of my favorite bumbles. One of them buzzed into my head today by accident. Both parties were uninjured.🩷
Once the cherry blossoms reach peak pollen stage, the humans suffer greatly with allergies, but the bumblebees party hardy. (I saw a few honeybees getting down, as well.)
As is my normal routine this time of year, I chased bumblebees around the tree. I’m sure my neighbors think I’m daft, but I don’t particularly care. I love to be amongst the pink canopy watching the creatures pollinate. Sometimes I even see butterflies, but not so much lately, and that gives me a lump in the pit of my stomach.
Back to the bumblebees. They are docile, and they seem quite clumsy, but they have a mission. That mission does not include me with my phone’s camera all up in their grills trying to achieve the perfect capture. They buzz and tolerate me, but they despise close-ups. Trying to get a close-up of a bumblebee is like trying to catch a toddler who just found out about running: good luck.
These are a few of the photos I captured on my chase.
©️2024, itsamyisaid.com, all rights reserved
It seems as if our friend Daily Prompt has had some type of family drama occur this past weekend. Perhaps it was the Thanksgiving holiday, if Daily Prompt celebrates, that led to this question of loyalty among people. Did Daily Prompt experience a falling out? I suppose we will never know, but I hope Daily Prompt returns to us tomorrow with spirits renewed.
Here’s an old photo of my cat, Bubba. Because cats make everything better. Feel better soon, Daily Prompt.
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I miss your smell of Wind Song.
I miss your voice like bubbling joy.
I miss your hands like swirling gentle breeze in the house.
But I know that living means dying.
And I want to live. I want to live.
And you, Mom, I want you to be the dancing cherry blossoms.
Go, be the dancing cherry blossoms.
©2023, itsamyisaid.com, All Rights Reserved.
✨For my mom, who now is part of the soil beneath her beloved cherry tree. I know you can see your tree from all angles now.✨
Poem inspired by grief poetry prompt by Joseph Fasano, 2023
I’m sorry it took so long
I thought I had more springs
More blooms
More time
But your tree is dying
And it won’t see another spring
There won’t be more blooms
So
I put you there today
Mixed with that special soil
So you don’t kill the tree
That is already dying
Don’t worry
When it dies
I will plant
Another
You will help it grow
✨October 20, 2023✨
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There’s something about me you should know: I love trees. I believe the science that states trees communicate with each other through lengthy and entwined root systems deep underground, as well as through their branches and leaf canopies. Dying trees are fed sugar through their roots from other trees that know of their suffering. The forest is friendship and family.
But William, the towering Willow Oak adjacent to my home, does not live in a forest. Perhaps he started out in one, a hundred years ago, when he was a sapling – and before that, an acorn. But there’s no way to prove it.
As he is now, overseer of my home and its relatively small parcel of land, William has a few local friends. None are larger than he, but they are seemingly not intimated.
Oak trees are formidable, and they live long lives. William is an example of this – and yes, that’s his name, we have conferred. He asked for my name, of course. “It’s Amy,” I said.
Given his proximity to my dining room, health and sturdiness are important factors to know about William. “Great tree.” “Over one hundred years old. I’d love a tree like that on my property.” “Perfectly healthy.” Several tree specialists have said these exact words about my William. I imagine Wills puffing up and shaking his leaves in a show of bravado, but his leaves are eighty feet up and I can’t see what he’s doing with them.
And yes, I’ve decided William is a male. I’ve heard trees can be either/or, and William gives towering male protective vibes. He is over one hundred years old, after all. He’s a galant gentleman.
His trunk must measure fifteen to twenty feet in diameter (see photo above for William compared to the size of my foot). His visible root system grows just touching my house’s foundation – but before you become nervous about that, it just touches. The roots follow the line of the home in a parallel fashion, abutting, but never crossing. His well-established, strong roots running along the foundation of my home appears to be giving it a gentle but Herculean hug. He offers roots for when I feel rootless and ungrounded.
His rough bark reminds me that he is rough on the outside, but alive and doing important tree stuff on the inside. His green leaves of spring are a canopy of hope external (remembering that hope springs eternal), his brown leaves of fall are a yearly consternation to my home’s gutters, and are my shoes’ main nemesis. My welcome mat ignores the leaves completely, unfortunately. His acorns drop from up high, clanking the glass patio table. The acorns are large this year, which my mother always predicted meant a cold, snowy winter. We shall see. The squirrels have already begun to bury the acorns, and, if they remember the locations of burial, they will be well fed this winter.
When the invasive pest English Ivy threatened William’s trunk, I cut it away, furious. When it grew back and multiplied, I had it professionally removed. William seems pleased. He can show off his trunk again.
“It would take two hundred mile per hour winds to take down that tree,” a landscaper recently told me, staring up at William in awe. (He was the person who freed William of the ivy.) Fingers and limbs crossed that never happens. William is well-protected by my home in a sort of symbiotic relationship.
I woke this morning to see William in his usual place, with the sound of acorns dropping now and again. He seems peaceful and ready to get on with the cooler fall weather. He’s already preparing for spring. After visiting William, my mind and then my feet trailed to my front yard, where my surprise Eastern Redbud grows. Her name is Clementine, and she has a magnificent story to tell.
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