ode to trees

~Ode To Trees~

I'll be driving down the road (not literally driving, that would still be considered illegal at my age) and all of a sudden out of nowhere I'll shout,"OH! Look at that tree!!! Isn't it beautiful?!?!" and continue on to rant about the branches and leaves and roots and location and color and height and etc. etc. etc. If I don't know the name I'll find it, somehow, using this marvelous contraption, the internet. If I know the name it will only add to my boasting about the beauty of the roadside tree.

I don't know how many of you out there are aware of my love of trees. It's not really to be classified as a love of all plants, because truthfully it's not; I do like flowers but I don't quite have a tremendous interest in them, and whatever other plants there are out there besides trees and flowers, well obviously I don't care too much about those because I don't even know what they are. But trees...I think I've inherited this love from my dad, whose a swamp-scientist-dirt-loving-outdoorsy guy. If he's the one whose driving the car when I burst out with loud exclamations about a tree that at first glance looks just like all the others around it, he'll usually boast about his knowledge of the tree and eye for it's beauty more than I do.

But that's okay.

I don't know quite what is is that I love so much about them. The way their branches twist and loop and point and stick out - the color and shape of whatever leaves, if any, are clinging to those branches - the shape of their trunks, the way they bend or tower, the color of their bark - the way they serve as standing, intact pieces of history that can remind of us a time long since gone by, when the houses and McDonald's and malls surrounding them were once only fields of innocently grazing sheep. There's a lot of things that can be said for a tree.
So there you go. One thing that maybe you didn't know about me. I'll try to add to your fact collection every once and a while.

(please note and appreciate that the pictures below took me two days to gather for this post - it's a long story, and you have better things to do that waste your time listening to me explain a story whose moral is really just how technically inefficient a blond can be.)

try not to skim over these pics. take a look at them. you may see more than you expect.

oak trees

autumn birches

weeping willow in wintertime

weeping willow

european beech tree

american beech tree

japenese blooming apricot

african boaboa tree

birch trees

cherry blossom

sycamore

a little holiday inspiration

I know, I know, already into the whole holiday decor thing...and here I am always saying how ridiculous it is that everyone always seems to entirely skip Thanksgiving and move right on to Christmas the day after halloween. Slap me if you'd like to. But I can't quite help this...I saw these pictures and got that 'ooooo, pretty!'. Holiday decorating has just always supplied me with this cozy, warm feeling inside. The, 'sitting by the crackling fire with a good novel and a flannel blanket over you as snow falls gently to the frozen, still ground outside' feeling. I love that feeling.

a lullaby

this is a lullaby my mom sang to me nearly every night as a child. for a long time after I grew up enough to tuck myself in and fall asleep to my thoughts and songs, I had forgotten this little tune, and my memory of the lyrics was very gapped. but then, one day, both miraculously returned to me. it's a beautiful, calming lullaby (as lullabies are supposed to be) and tonight as I'm heading off to my flannel sheeted, comforter covered bed on the eve of a new week of school (ugh) I wanted to share it with you :] ...and then I'll go sing it to myself, hopefully easing some of the distress about launching back into routine...

Train Whistle Blowin'

Train whistle blowin', makes a sleepy noise
Underneath their blankets go all the girls and boys
Rockin', rollin', ridin', out along the bay
All bound for Morningtown, many miles a-way

Driver at the engine, Fireman rings the bell
Sandman swings the lantern to show that all is well
Rockin', rollin', ridin', out along the bay
All bound for Morningtown, many miles a-way

Somewhere there is sunshine, somewhere there is day
Somewhere there is Morningtown, many miles a-way
Rockin', rollin', ridin', out along the bay
All bound for Morningtown, many miles a-way

All bound for Morningtown, many miles a-way.

stargazing on a dark blue night

I was looking at the stars one night this past summer, all scattered out on a vast, dark blue sky, when something that I'd never really thought about before hit me: even though they look really, really tiny from where we're standing, down on this puny planet, they're HUGE somewhere, enormously HUGE, which is by no means a never before thought up concept...but for some reason, it was a revelation for me that night. Those stars are huge, somewhere...and that was really amazing to me.
God works in your mind in such small, yet big ways :]

-- Stargazing by Leon Jackson --

{to God}

Picture life before I knew you
It was alright, it was ok
I'll paint my life before I loved you
There were never pictures in the hallway
There were no fireworks
There was no grand allure
That only happened when you came through my door

CHORUS:
And oh now
Life feels more than amazing
In your eyes
It feels like I've been stargazing

Feels like I'm living in a movie
Like I'm Fred Astaire
Singin' in the rain
I see the fireworks
I feel the grand allure
It happens every time
That you walk through my door

And oh now
Life feels more than amazing
In your eyes
It feels like I've been stargazing

There were no fireworks
There was no grand allure
That only happened when you came through my door

And oh now
Life feels more than amazing
In your eyes
It feels like I've been stargazing

Looking in your eyes
I'm stargazing
I'm stargazing
Looking in your eyes
I'm stargazing
I'm stargazing


-- Stars by Switchfoot --

Maybe I've been the problem
Maybe I'm the one to blame
But even when I turn it off and blame myself
The outcome feels the same
I've been thinking maybe I've been partly cloudy
Maybe I'm the chance of rain
And maybe I'm overcast
And maybe all my luck's washed down the drain

I've been thinking 'bout everyone
Everyone, you look so lonely
But when I look at the stars
When I look at the stars
When I look at the stars
I see someone else
When I look at the stars, the stars
I feel like myself

Stars looking at a planet watching entropy and pain
And maybe start to wonder how
The chaos in our lives could pass as sane
Ive been thinking of the meaning of resistance
Of a world beyond my own
And suddenly the infinite and penitent
Began to look like home

I've been thinking 'bout everyone
everyone, you look so empty
But when I look at the stars
When I look at the stars
When I look at the stars
I see someone else
When I look at the stars, the stars
I feel like myself


Stars..Stars...


Everyone everyone you feel so lonely
Everyone, yeah, everyone you feel so empty

When I look at the stars
When I look at the stars
When I look at the stars
I feel like myself
when I look at the stars, the stars
I see someone...


**********************************************************

Firstly...

Firstly, I apologize for nada recent activity here lately :/ Every day, believe me, it crosses my mind, 'Oh man, I need to get on there and write something." Because I really do want to, but every day I have to refrain because the simple prospect of homework is so overwhelming I just can't bring myself to do much else but comply to studiousness. Sigh.
I'm probably exaggerating things just a wee bit...but my teachers do give a lot of homework, and they do expect that we do it completely and goodly...(you don't have to worry about my English grade, really...) which is not at all a surprise or anything, it's just not a pleasing reality :/
But enough with that. The purpose of this post is to simply to give a little illustration of what my life looks like these days:

• It's COLD. November is here. My mom and I were leaving Shriners Hospital the other day (the nonchalance of that statement shouldn't be alarming...it was just a check up on my scoliosis, and, guess what, I'm okay and the appointment was pretty much pointless (ha...) but I got to miss most of a day at school, so no hard feelings there.) and my mom asked me if I liked November. "Mm, I like it okay," and she went into this lengthy story about how my grandma always loved November because, even though it's gloomy and cold most of the time, you can see the shape of all the trees when they lose their leaves. Which is a nice way to look at it...different from just saying they look like skeletons. So it's November, and thanks to some people on facebook who seem to take on the responsibility of faithfully posting as their status the number of days till certain holidays and such -- I've found out that Christmas is 48 (no typo...) days away. Which is completely preposterous to me.
• Because of parent teacher conferences -- not out of the kindness of their hearts -- my school gave us half-days monday through wednesday and no school on thursday and friday this week. I think as you can probably imagine most of us were on the brink of hysterical fits of joyous laughter by the time 1pm wednesday rolled around. Mmmm....I love getting out of school. Thinking about 7 or 8 hours of precious freedom during which I usually do nothing but homework anyways but hey, it's the thought that counts. For those 7 or 8 hours I actually have a life again. For some reason that's how I look at it...you can probably notice I don't think much of school.
• In other news -- my mom took me on a big shopping spree recently and I got to buy this incredible winter coat with fur lining on the inside and big pockets and lots of isolation and I love it so dearly I'm wearing it right now, sitting here at the computer desk...I was cold, and I don't think there's many more sensible things to wear when you're very cold than a winter coat. Don't you agree? I've been stripping down and taping up and color scheming and cutting out in my room during the last week, renovating large portions of my wall, alegbra has proved once again that you can't stay home even one day of school without falling way behind, I have a cold so when I'm singing in my room and a high note comes along, it's not a very pretty sound...My dogs' line for going outside broke somehow so we have to just push them out the door and stand there watching them to make sure they don't sneak away or get eaten by wolves, and that gets really annoying after a while. Because all they do for some reason is stand there in the backyard and look at us with this forlorn expression, like, "Oh, I see, you just don't love me anymore so you're kicking me out and then laughing at me as I stand out here in the cold with no where to go..." I've been playing a lot of Christmas music, taking a lot of walks, groaning at the lack of food in my house, and apart from all that, not much else has been going on in my world.

Time to spare you from anymore of this torture. Now that you've read this, I hereby grant you freedom to carry on with your life. Shoo.