Friday, August 22, 2014

Creeping Cypress

What I thought was autumn's quiet creep around the wheel of the year was just an illusionist's grand trick. Autumn is far off yet. Today we'll reach 100, and tomorrow, and the next day. But the two varieties of creeping cypress we planted back in spring on our woodland arbor are loving the sun. We are trying to keep them watered well since rain has not visited in a while but these plants seem pretty hardy and probably don't even need our tending. The blooms are best in midday, drinking up those sunbeams in their red, fluted blooming cups. And the leaves, especially the broader kind, are mesmerizing, otherworldly with all their beckoning fingers. The twining tendrils are wild and reaching out for one another. I love this plant.






Monday, August 18, 2014

August Moons

Today it is hazy, hot, and humid here in the Ozark Mountains. It hasn't been like this all summer though. We've been graced with a lovely, mild summer with rain here and there. Some evenings even dipped their toes into the 50s. Last week when it was cooler, a low fog crept onto our land at dusk just as the Grain Moon rose in the east. The Grain Moon, or Corn Moon, is the full moon of August named because now is time to harvest the bounty of summer - be it grain or corn or the other members of your garden. The moon was bright and the fog danced across the fields. By the time the sun had set in full, all the fog was gone. Autumn waits just around the bend.
 


 

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Heartwood


Heartwood - prints available here.
 
Go, find your way into the Heartwood. It is here you will stumble upon yourself.
 
Heartwood is the strong, woody core of a living tree, increasing it diameter as the tree ages. It is stronger, darker, harder than the sapwood, the outer part of the tree that sustains life and conducts water. The heartwood, though technically dead, gives the tree the strong supportive core to hold itself up, to keep on living.
 
To me, though, heartwood is where I have found a home. A gentle, cradling forest. A prismatic canopy of greens. A forest floor abundant with life and decay. The older I get the more I appreciate wilderness, the more I earnestly need it.
 
A serendipitous walk through my woods resulted in this photo which is now for sale in my Etsy Shop. This is an opened seed pod of the Blue False Indigo wildflower floating in a puddle of rain on limestone. The forest is reflected from above.