#ThursdayTreeLove | Le Flamboyant

February 11, 202111 Comments

“Le Flamboyant,” 2003, Enel Desir. Acrylic on Canvas.

Isn’t this a stunning work of art?

I pulled “Le Flamboyant,” the image above, from an old agenda that I can’t bring myself to toss because it is beautiful and educational. Though I love the rural scene depicted here, we all know I am drawn to this masterpiece because of the “flamboyant” or flame tree, which dominates this work of Haitian artist Enel Desir.

Enel Desir was born in Cavaillon, a small town in southwest Haiti, and began painting at a very young age. While attending the lycée [high school], he worked various jobs–as a photographer-reporter, a calligrapher, and an illustrator. Under the supervision of a French art teacher, Desir studied the work of such great masters as Velasquez, Renoir, and Rembrandt, which had tremendous influence on his early style.

One of his favorite subjects is the Haitian market scene, which he interprets through his colorful depictions of merchants selling flowers, and his still lifes of local fruits and vegetables. The colors Desir uses–soft green, red, orange, light blue, and yellow–enhance the appearance of the black skin of the human figures in his paintings. In 1991, the art critic Ed McCormack compared Desir with the great Mexican muralist Siqueiros. “Desir,” McCormack said, “creates sophisticated pictorials.”

Desir has participated in numerous worldwide exhibitions; his paintings have always been well received, particularly in the International Exhibition of Seville, Spain (1992) and in South Africa. Very much in demand, his works have been featured on television and in museums, books, magazines, and newspapers around the world. He was a featured artist at the Organization of American States’ exhibit in Haiti, held in Washington, DC, where he resides and paints. –from 365 Days of Black History, IOKTS Productions, published by Pomegranate.

I have had little success with finding more of Desir’s art via the internet. One brief biography of the artist pointed out that though he is a prolific artist compelled to create art, his work is scarce in the marketplace. I did manage to find one other image at the Galerie d’Art Nader of Haiti.

For actual photos of the beautiful flamboyant tree, click here.

I am joining Parul Thakur for #ThursdayTreeLove every second and fourth Thursday of the month. If you would like to play along, post a picture of a tree on your blog and link it back to her latest #treelove post.

#ThursdayTreeLove | A Calming Winter Walk

January 28, 202114 Comments

Everywhere I go I keep falling in love with trees and wanting to stay just a little bit longer.

Gloomy weather some days and a packed schedule other days made time with the trees unlikely this week. Fortunately, late Saturday afternoon provided sunshine and milder temperatures, so I was able to get a strong dose of tree love to carry me through the week.

Since I couldn’t escape the demands of daily life, I retraced my weekend steps over and over.

I walked the path in my mind, again noting the quiet of mid-winter: the understated appeal of the browns and grays against beautiful skies, of leafless and fallen trees resting in the sacred silence of the season.

It’s not exactly pretty, but it is beautiful.

[Recalling] these moments helped me take deep, even breaths and find calm in the madness.

About the Images: These are a few iPhone shots from a walk through trails of the Wade Mountain Nature Preserve. I’ll share some of the shots from my “real camera” for another #ThursdayTreeLove–when the task of sorting through and selecting photos won’t feel overwhelming.

#ThursdayTreeLove | Foggy Morn

January 14, 2021January 14, 202122 Comments

The color of winter is in the imagination. –Terri Guillemets?

We interrupt Sunflower Month for our first #ThursdayTreeLove post of the year.

I returned to campus yesterday, and of course, I escaped the office for brief moments and visited the trees. I took photos, but it was the two foggy morning shots I managed to get on the drive in that stole my heart.

The fog was so dense that only the car directly ahead was visible. It wasn’t great for driving, but I loved how the fog covered familiar scenes in a way that I can only describe as otherworldly.

It’s a little difficult photographing from a moving car, so I missed some of the more powerful scenes, such as the sun’s rays projecting from a dense group of trees and the eerie light it cast on open fields. No matter. I am pleased with these two and the others are etched in my memory.

#ThursdayTreeLove | A Trip to Tuscany

December 31, 2020January 1, 202111 Comments

I missed #ThursdayTreeLove last week. Thankfully, December gave us five Thursdays this year, because I could not miss celebrating Parul Thakur’s 100th #ThursdayTreeLove post! I started participating with #TTL 45–2.5 years and approximately 55 #ThursdayTreeLoves ago–but Parul’s been rocking tree love consistently for four years!

Number 100 deserves something special, so I am taking you on a brief trip to Tuscany with photographs by Steven Rothfeld from a 2007 engagement calendar, Under the Tuscan Sun.

While attempting a major declutter of my home office, I ran across the calendar, which features excerpts and recipes from Frances Mayes’s books—Under the Tuscan Sun, Bella Tuscany, In Tuscany, and Bringing Tuscany Home. Instead of tossing it as I probably should have, I decided to use some of the images in journals and letters. All of the images are beautiful, but I was really mesmerized by photos that included the Mediterranean Cypress.

Please enjoy a bit of eye-candy from Tuscany with Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Keeping Quiet.” The poem has nothing to do with trees or Tuscany, but it does offer a bit contemplation for entering the new year.

Photo by Stephen Rothfeld

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

Photo by Stephen Rothfeld

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Photo by Stephen Rothfeld

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

Photo by Stephen Rothfeld

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

I was torn between this poem and another by Neruda, so I’ll share the other poem tomorrow. Until then, though the blast of fireworks and the countdown to midnight vie for your attention, be sure to tune inward and take a moment for quiet reflection.

#ThursdayTreeLove | Lit

December 10, 2020December 13, 202013 Comments

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the [wo]man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a [wo]man is, so [s]he sees. –William Blake, “Letter to John Trusler,” 1799.

I’m having a hard time focusing on my tasks today, so I’m taking a short break to share a bit of tree love.

One late October evening just before leaving work, I looked out the window and whoa! I was stunned speechless by these trees lit by the setting sun. I was mesmerized, actually.

The photos do little justice to the scene, but I hope they offer just a glimpse of the unearthly beauty that nearly moved me to tears.

#ThursdayTreeLove | Coping with the Madness of 2020: Spend Time with Trees

November 12, 2020November 13, 202017 Comments

“Autumn Road,” November 2020

In a cool solitude of trees
Where leaves and birds a music spin,
Mind that was weary is at ease,
New rhythms in the soul begin. –William Kean Seymour

I’ve written enough about tree therapy on the blog for you to know that “talking to the trees” is definitely one of the ways I cope with life’s challenges. You’ve probably figured, then, 2020 has driven me to the trees more times than I can count.

I could not find time this week for a full tree therapy session, but I took advantage of drive time for quick doses.

The sight of autumn taking over as I drove to work was thrilling, and the drive through campus was like entering an autumn heaven. The reds, yellows, and oranges vied for my attention.

Some mornings, I parked, stood outside my car in the early morning quiet (before others arrived), and took it all in. I listened to the wind and trees sing in perfect harmony as the crisp leaves danced across the parking lot.

Even such short pauses with the trees shake off the madness.

If you want to read more about how trees help me cope, take a look at some of my older posts or click the #ThursdayTreeLove hashtag below:

Consider the Trees, December 2014
Pause for Sanity, January 2015
Praying with Trees, February 2017
The Oak and a Lesson in Self-Healing, October 2018

Hopefully, the posts will persuade you to try a bit of tree therapy!

#ThursdayTreeLove | When Tree Love Meets Creative Auto

October 22, 202016 Comments

For the last few weeks my campus walks have been taking me in directions I don’t normally take, and I have thoroughly enjoyed other sights and sounds of campus. As always, there’s no shortage of trees to love.

A couple of weeks ago, my walk started with the tree below:

I pass this tree twice a day–on my way to and from the office. In fact, it’s had a moment on the blog before. But as I was on my way to a different tree, this lone tree and its shadow caught my eye. The photo is a bit boring because I was really photographing the shadow.

Then…just yesterday, my camera wanted to play and found the tree again!

Again, I was drawn to the tree’s shadow. 😉

I’ve had a DSLR with a Creative Auto (CA) setting for at least a decade, but until a few days ago, I had not even attempted to play around with CA. Gasp! Don’t judge me too harshly.

There are various fun settings–toy camera, vivid, monochrome [of course], fisheye, soft focus, miniature, ambient, and more–but the grainy black and white stole my heart. I don’t know what it is about this setting that’s made me go ga-ga! The images are nostalgic and dramatic and artsy and moody all at once.

The really cool thing about the CA setting is that it captures a normal [color] version of the image as well as the “creative” image, so there are no regrets about missing the opportunity to shoot a particular object in color.

Thus, we have my two favorite photos from today’s escape-the-screen photo walk:

Yes. I walked to the willows today.

Be sure to take some time away from the screens and have a weekend filled with joy and creativity!

#ThursdayTreeLove | “When I Am Among the Trees”

October 8, 2020October 10, 202016 Comments

As I’m nearing the end of this week of not feeling quite like myself, I am thankful for the time I spent with the trees–during one long walk on a path I hadn’t taken in years and in brief moments while running errands.

The photo above was from one of my shorter walks. As I walked, I looked up to behold the beautiful black walnut tree with its gorgeous branch extended over the path–an invitation to loveliness and light.

Being “among the trees” is therapy at its best. “They save me…daily.”

“When I Am Among the Trees”
Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

#ThursdayTreeLove | Robin Hood’s Tree

September 17, 2020September 17, 202020 Comments

So passed the seasons then, so they pass now, and so they will pass in time to come, while we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten. –Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

Thanks to sheer exhaustion, I missed #ThursdayTreeLove last week, but I’m making up for it today by taking you on a brief trip to Sherwood Forest to get a glimpse of the magnificent Major Oak.

I went to Sherwood Forest many, many moons ago and fell in love with the famed tree which the legendary outlaw Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men used as a hideout. I probably don’t need to tell you that this English professor loves visiting the actual places made famous [in my mind] by literature, so this was definitely a treat!

The [800 to] 1000-year-old tree is the largest tree in England. It is supported by stilts and has been so since the Victorian Age.

The original images [below] were shot with a film camera–a Canon Photura–in the days before digital cameras, but I had the roll digitized. It seems the digitized images lost their integrity over the years, so I edited them [above] for the post. [Click below to see larger images of the originals]

You can see better images and find out more information about the Major Oak of Sherwood Forest by clicking this link.

I am [usually] joining Parul Thakur for #ThursdayTreeLove every second and fourth Thursday of the month. [This is the third Thursday. Forgive me]. If you would like to play along, post a picture of a tree on your blog and link it back to her latest #treelove post.

#ThursdayTreeLove | Unbothered

August 27, 2020September 17, 202021 Comments

“Oak Feet”

The campus trees and I have been reunited! I returned to work August 3 [technically], but it had been too hot to visit them. Yesterday was less oppressive, so I was happy to get outdoors when a colleague needed a favor. While I was walking back to my office, I noticed how beautifully the oak near my building had spread.

“The Spreading Oak” [iPhone photo]

I had to get back to my office to complete a task before leaving for the day, so I quickly snapped the shot above with my phone and promised to return.

I made good on my promise today.

I worked diligently all morning. It was afternoon before I knew it, so I took a five-minute break to clear my head and energize before tackling another task on the ‘must do today” list. Of course, I headed to the trees.

“Intricate Pattern”

Oh, how I missed them the last five+ months! I didn’t have much time, so I walked the circle of trees nearest my building. I stood still for a moment to take in the scene–from the patterns in tree trunks (above) to the tiny magnolia [?] that took root in the foot of another tree (below).

“Magnolia Rooted”

Then, I turned my attention to the oak. I was simply mesmerized by its majesty and by how much it had thrived in the absence of an abundance of human activity. In fact, all the trees seemed unbothered by pandemics and human foibles.

“Hello, Beautiful”

I was reminded of a reading from Melodie Beattie’s Journey to the Heart. In the passage, she refers to the redwoods of California, but I will take the liberty and ascribe her words to “my” trees:

“A Fragment of the Majestic”

For hundreds of years they have been here, patiently seeing things through. Little ruffled them. They just kept on growing for all those years—steadily, patiently, peacefully, calmly. They have been through enough, seen enough, to know not to worry. Things work out. Change happens. Life continues to evolve.

I didn’t see one tree hurrying or worrying. They have been here long enough to learn life’s lessons well. –Melody Beattie, Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul