Sparkling Lotus Ink

Grandfather Hickory

Isn't he magnificent?!?  This is how he appears from our front steps throughout our green-season months.  His presence is the first thing I register when I hit the bottom of the stairs and automatically open the door to release the cat.  But there's nothing automatic about the way I stand and gaze at our property's western guardian every morning and night.   One of the things I love most about this image (other than it being one of the few times I've successfully captured the greenalicious haze and harmony that personifies what this place looks and feels like roundabout my birthday) relates to the way Grandfather's shadow rolls up the widening lawn in a capture that illustrates his clear embrace of this Place.    

[I'd also like to point out the graceful young Maple lass in the lower left third's top edge.  She is growing from a stump we judged to be 10 to 15 years old upon arrival. I blogged about Her a few times in the first years here before my big Unplug.]

I took this picture from the dooryard/driveway of the farmhouse across the road.  For awhile now I've been drawn to have reference material for drawing Grandfather from his west-facing profile-side.    Before that I'd spent an hour or so bombing around in the part of our little woods that's open to human passage.  Eventually this brought me back where I'd started and set me walking along the mildly nerve-wracking (due to its narrowness) hump of walk-able ground between woods terrain and the most oft-traveled road in these parts. 

Grandfather's north-facing profile is something I don't usually notice.  To begin with, this road is dangerous to walk along although people do it all the time.  Living where I do I've borne at least auditory and directly-after-the-fact witness to the human risk* of doing so.  Driving on the road with my array of witness experiences, I'm virtually never looking at the tree although I surely feel his presence holding me steady.  Keeping me on point constantly scanning for *people who, more than likely, have no choice but to walk the road in order to secure their groceries.  But I do often admire his opposite southern-facing profile from the passenger's seat with J. when we're heading home from where-ever we've been to the south or west.

This was the best approximation/partial rendering I could get from the middle of the far less traveled street just around the corner from the road.  Truncated to insure privacy for my farm neighbors.  Except these two who were STOKED when I appeared first in the cow's line of vision across the road and then drawing ever-closer while cow did the same and then directly adjacent to the goat's rock there just inside their electrified World.  Both of them posed almost expectantly.  Realized they'd been watching me snippy-snap all my way along the journey to THEIR place and probably understand on their own terms about phone cameras.  But more importantly I realized at a sensory level their oasis of Sanctuary.  Both clearly secure in their Place within a larger Place-for-All.  Farmer lady told me summer before last that the goat could easily jump clear of the wires whenever he pleased "but he likes the cow."  Indeed.  Who wouldn't.

While I was talking to them as I rewarded their posing efforts I realized Grandfather is part of their bedrock life's landscape just as much as mine.  I don't know what that means to them collectively as a micro-herd or as individuals.  But I know they know Grandfather is there.

stand still with me .1

Hours ago I took this particular shot with sharing in mind.   So we could all just stop and look without the razzmatazz of blooming things.  The center background is vertically grounded by the hemlock I've left mostly alone up until last spring.  I haven't tampered with the tree's intentional shape or inherent architecture but I have cut off a raft of secondary branches that were blocking several hours of sunlight a day from the frog pond's general eco-system.

The foreground features original plantings of standard mid-70's issue:  never-fail hostas.  Seriously run amok rudbekia/brown eyed susan, chocolate mint, astibles, columbine, 3 different sorts of iris and spurge.  These are inter- mixed with a variety of native asters and milkweed that I've welcomed and encouraged.  Also way off to the far right corner of this space out of picture-range - there's a wonderful epimedium that's trebled in size under my care and unfailing admiration.

[am pointedly not mentioning the pachysandra in this area and elsewhere.  in an ideal world I would never ever mention this specific plant and it's 'miraculous' mid-70's Fool Proof planting solution status. But someday I will do an entire post illustrating what an ecological dilemma this diabolically invasive plant poses.] 

The skewed mitre-frame beyond the straw mulching created by dried plant stalks.  Follow that line of tall extinguished plant matter.  It joins with a comparable line to form a not-right angle.  This is goldenrod.  I hope to root-out more of it before the ground freezes but there are a number of other things I hope to do with a lot more sense of urgent purpose.   The large rust colored mound of spent flowers just left of center is a snowball viburnum.  The tree to its left, directly in front of the hemlock, is a Japanese dogwood.  She's not completely well but I prune all dead branches over the fall, January thaw, and earliest spring.   When we first arrived she was merely partially dead but she barely flowered.  Now the tree's yearly rise of life-force is contained solely in living wood.  She flowers beautifully and on every bough that's survived the winter.

Two volunteer offspring saplings flank their mother.  One is incredibly robust and may in my lifetime replace her mama in the role of visual anchor.  She'll be tall and lithe but ever so off-the-mark by a yard or two in relation to where a Perfect Eye would place, plant and maintain the backbone planting features.  I've planted another somewhat less date-the-trend type of tree; in a comparably less design-y obvious place but right along the same undeniably pleasing sight line.  Will introduce the Fair Lass on the other side of winter.  It will be her second here and how she responds next spring will determine whether she's planning to put energy into being a 'proper' tree or if she'll survive more happily as a multi-sprigged shrub.  

Also share-worthy:  yesterday a/k/a the first day-long sun we had after so much rain sleet or snow - I did indeed visit Grandfather Hickory just as I intended.  I would share more of him and his Place beyond my personal sense of connection but that would involve walking rather than standing still with me.  Today I'd much rather we all just stand still in this moment of embrace. 

ouch

Hello.  I'd like to introduce you to one of my most important tree friends here in the walking-around world of my life since the late '90's.  This is a Shagbark Hickory that may or may not still exist within the energetically percolating surroundings of a nearby nature sanctuary that's definitely still "with us".  I'd planned to take a jaunt over there at some point during the weekend to see if the tree still stood.  My sense is that it does. 

The plan was to go there on something of a re-con in and out mission due to hunting season.  After not being there for ten years the instinct is to wander around at length looking and examining privately while also documenting all areas that I used to document when this was my Wild place to go.  Take an offering of a very specific nature for the tree, hug it if it still stands.  Take some pictures if that felt right.

The idea's been germinating since partway through my reading of The Overstory but by last mid-week it felt imperative that I take myself there ASAP.  Not sure why.  But it's certainly true that this specific tree  remains a shining beacon to me in meditation, dreams and by way of the infinitude of pictures I took of it during all seasons over the course of 6 or 7 years' time.  But then something or other that I did on Friday made my lumbar spinal region quite unhappy.  It coulda been anything, really, because I was 'way more into getting things done bing bam boom than I was mindful of how, exactly, I was [evidently mis]-using my body along the way.

In consequence I'm currently having a lot of sciatic nerve pain from its root allllllll the way along its course, top to tip.  This is not a new thing for me - it's just a thing I generally stay mindful enough to avoid aggravating to the degree that I have to stop my life to get things properly soothed and healed.  I haven't answered any emails since this re-injury made itself known.  Will get back to everyone as soon as it's no longer foolish to sit up and type in this manner for more than the time it's taken me to get this written and posted.

LOVE.

This was the third or fourth time I hugged the Shagbark Hickory.  The scarred-over wound portrait at the top of this post contained holes where I left many gifts and healing talismans as offerings to the tree's medicine spirit.  Did this for more than a year before telling the tree I was moving in for the embrace.  Will tell that story at some point after my spine's in a better state of balance.