The Nature of Things

(Here's a favorite post from the archives of my other blog Gardening With Nature , while I enjoy the day set aside to celebrate the life of a great American hero, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) "I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree," the poet Joyce Kilmer wrote just before he went off to serve in World War I, where his life ended. His poem lives on, and no one has ever better described the mystical hold of trees on the human psyche. At all seasons of the year, trees have a kind of beauty and poetry and majesty of their own. In mid-winter, as at every season, they are the anchors of the garden. Live oaks, of course, are much the same at all seasons. They never get fully undressed, although they do shed their leaves in spring as new leaves are being produced. In winter, their leaves offer shelter and sanctuary for birds who need a safe haven from predators or from the weather. The same can be said of the magnolia trees, a favorite roosting place for many bir...

First and foremost, this is a beautiful book. It features over 5,000 meticulous illustrations, by master botanical artist David More, of the nearly 2,000 species of trees found in the forests, landscapes, and gardens of North America and Europe.  In addition to the precise paintings which illustrate the important details of trees - things like leaves, needles, bark, blossoms, fruits, nuts, and cones - More's paintings are accompanied by informative text from John White, a former research dendrologist at the UK's Forestry Commission. This is the book's second edition, the first published in 2002 and this one just out in June of this year.  It is a big book, weighing in at over five pounds, but then it has to be big in order to give full justice to all those different trees. The trees are divided, quite logically, as you would expect from an encyclopedia, into families. Forty-seven distinct families of trees are represented here, from the largest ones like Cypress, Pine, Rose...

Spring has come early to my yard this year. The oak trees are awakening, bringing promise of the season to come. After more than a year of extreme drought in Southeast Texas, we've had a very wet beginning to 2012. The trees that have survived the drought have drunk deep from all that water and restored themselves. It is a very hopeful thing to see.

The fig tree is budding. The Trees by Philip Larkin The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh. The Collected Poems   by Philip Larkin The trees in my part of the world had a very rough time of it last year. Thousands of them died due to the drought. But now the survivors have had their winter's rest and they are ready to put all of that behind them. The rains have come and the trees have drunk deep. "Last year is dead, they seem to say," and if they could speak, this would probably be their advice to us: The past is dead. Time to "Begin afresh, afresh, afresh. Blueberry buds.