• leaves,  lifestyles,  Plants,  quotes

    One of those moments

    November 9, 2022

    “Don’t ask the world to change….you change first.”

    Anthony de Mello

    It was one of those moments. The ground around me was changing every second as leaves from the elm trees were constantly descending everywhere. I took three photos before I stopped and settled into just being the observer of the beautiful moment I was experiencing. If you look closely you will see one leaf in mid-descent just to the left of center.

    Had a wonderful lunch with my oldest daughter today. We talked about those questions we all seem to ask, “What do I want to do or be when I grow up?” She is one of many who have attained the career goals, the family, home, cars, money and more. She now asks what else is there? Seems I’ve reached a point where things do not have the value of the past. What’s important are those things I cannot grasp but only experience and live: peace, serenity, love, compassion, family, friends, journaling, photography, and… you can fill the rest of the list. Sounds like changes are about to happen in her life.

    It’s been a cold day. Finished my steps and I’m in for the evening. Will have a Zoom chat with a friend who just moved back east.

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  • fall season,  leaves,  Plants,  quotes,  seasons

    Say whatever prayers you choose….

    November 8, 2022

    Perhaps we should all settle down and think about what’s good in the world and what we want to do here. If we find this planet and its history and its story to be sacred, let’s preserve and nourish it, and then we can go home at night and say whatever prayers we choose.

    Ursula Goodenough

    Another lovely day in Colorado. It was a brisk 30 degrees this morning but we reached a nice 65 degrees. Blue skies and sunshine dominated. I attended, and enjoyed, a brunch with a few of my high school classmates, something we will do on a monthly basis. Had a good time and of course picked from the seniors menu. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do when you’re seniors. Later this afternoon I wandered around the pond with my camera for fall colors and soaked up the sun before it settled behind the mountains. This simple scene, through its beauty and existence, stirred something within me. It’s through these sacred experiences I feel I’m changed forever. And, my words fall short. Hope you had a good day and say whatever prayers you choose before bed.

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  • fall season,  leaves,  musings,  Plants,  quotes,  seasons,  Thomas Berry,  writing/reading

    They’re gone

    November 3, 2022

    Any being can benefit only if the larger context of its existence benefits. This law can be seen in the honey bee and the flower. Both benefit when the bee comes to drink the nectar of the flower: the flower is fertilised, the bee obtains what it needs for making its honey.

    The tree is nourished by the soil; the tree nourishes the soil with its leaves.

    It is the ancient law of reciprocity. Whoever gives must also receive.

    Thomas Berry

    One of the most beautiful experiences of fall for me is watching all those leaves being scattered everywhere by the winds. I also know some of you feel the same way. Where they land and how they land provides colors and patterns that are my eye candy or even Leaf Creatures. Sadly, they’re now gone, or at least most of them. The landscapers came through yesterday and spent hours blowing leaves around, mowing them up or bagging them up. Leaves have a purpose in life and part of that purpose is to decay on the ground and provide nutrients for more life. The purpose for those leaves has been altered.

    According to the EPA, yard trimmings, which include leaves, created about 35.4 million tons of waste in 2018. This analysis resulted in an estimate of 22.3 million tons of yard trimmings composted or wood waste mulched in 2018 with a 63 percent composting rate. In 2018, landfills received about 10.5 million tons of yard trimmings, which comprised 7.2 percent of all material specific waste landfilled. That composting rate is a good number, much more than I expected. But, no matter how you look at it that is a lot of yard trimmings.

    Removing leaves in the fall is a task that many homeowners perform without question. Whether the leaves absolutely need to be cleaned up at this time is debatable. From an ecological standpoint, the answer to this question is no. However, if someone intends to have and maintain a healthy lawn beneath their trees, they really should try to remove them before the winter or mulch them. I will not enter into that the debate because my vote would be to remove the lawns. Let’s have some good old dirt to track in the house, some wildflowers, and beautiful gardens. Enough of my ranting!

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  • Annie Dillard,  fall season,  leaves,  Plants,  quotes,  seasons

    Concerning trees and leaves..

    October 27, 2022

    Concerning trees and leaves… there’s a real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud and flower. Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn’t make one. 

    Annie Dillard

    Annie Dillard’s quote caused me to rethink my perspective on the world of these trees around me. It’s that thing where I look at them, see their beauty, see them as a passive object, while failing to see the innate and active power within them. And, I couldn’t make a leaf either. However, I love to see them swirling in the wind, whether the leaf is clinging to a branch or free-falling to the ground, or lying peacefully on the ground. Always intrigued by their shapes, patterns, colors and how nature seemingly and randomly scatters them to and fro, making beautiful art, just for me. And, I love to photograph them. ❤️

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  • leaves,  musings,  Plants,  quotes,  writing/reading

    … free of hatred and despair

    October 25, 2022

    The mind does not find peace, nor does it enjoy pleasure and joy, nor does it find sleep or fortitude when the thorn of hatred dwells in the heart.

    A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, Chapter VI: 3

    As I walk around the yard I’m aware of how many different shapes, patterns, and colors of leaves there are. Cottonwoods, elms, locust, birch. What many people don’t realize is that scientists have determined that in all the world, no two leaves of any plants are identical. Each is one of a kind—unique.

    We can say the same with humans, no two are identical. We share our humanity through our various colors, shapes and sizes. Hatred is an unnecessary thorn of an ideology, a false belief, planted within us, that separates and destroys lives. Gandhi says, “No two leaves are alike, and yet there is no antagonism between them.” I pray today that the world be free of hatred and despair and fully embrace the uniqueness and beauty that each of us brings to the world.

    It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair.

    James Baldwin
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  • fall season,  leaves,  Mary Oliver,  Plants,  quotes,  seasons

    More

    October 17, 2022

    “I am one of those who has no trouble imagining the sentient lives of trees, of their leaves in some fashion communicating or of the massy trunks and heavy branches knowing it is I who have come, as I always come, each morning, to walk beneath them, glad to be alive and glad to be there.”

    Mary Oliver

    Good morning! It is a bright sunshiny morning. Awoke to frost on the car as winter draws closer. This image is from my walk yesterday afternoon and shows more of the colors nature is giving us this year in the city, which has been beautiful. However, it will not be long and these colors will be gone for this season. Winter will bring the greys and browns then followed by blankets of white. Already been to the coffee shop and indulged in a mocha and lemon cranberry scone. Happy Monday!

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