A New Idea for a Blog Post

| TravellinPenguin

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This social isolation gets to you once in awhile. Trying to think of things to entertain myself. Today I took Ollie out for a photo walk in the bush. As we walked through the trees I decided I needed some themes in my photography to keep my interest. I needed to look for things.  I saw a lot of old dead tree stumps with various degrees of deterioration and lots of insects so I thought I’d focus on those a bit. Then I thought I’d go home and discover what books relating to the word “tree” I had on my shelf.

There are several blog posts where people share what is on their shelf with others and I really enjoy those posts. Some of those books are read and some of them aren’t. So I had this big brainwave of combining my photography with my books.

Today is the first effort and I’m happy to share it here. Now I need to think of other themes I can combine all while social isolating. That should be more of a challenge than the trees have been. So…..

Here we go- five books and five photos

BOOKS:

Eucalyptus

  1.  Eucalyptus by Murray Bail as most of the trees around our house are that variety. The description from Good Reads states:

The gruff widower Holland has two possessions he cherishes above all others:
his sprawling property of eucalyptus trees and his ravishingly beautiful daughter, Ellen.
When Ellen turns nineteen Holland makes an announcement: she may marry only the man who can correctly name the species of each of the hundreds of gum trees on his property.

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The remains of a very old moth hang on this stump. Only the shredded wings remain

2.  Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Tree by Saki.  This is a little black Penguin from the 80 th birthday boxed set of the Little Black Classics.

Sake Cherry TreeIt is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met…’

Moonlight, sake, spring blossom, idle moments, a woman’s hair – these exquisite reflections on life’s fleeting pleasures by a thirteenth-century Japanese monk are delicately attuned to nature and the senses.

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No social isolation for these ants. I have visited this tree before and it was just as busy. 

3.  Climbing The Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jeffrey.

Mango TreeToday’s most highly regarded writer on Indian food gives us an enchanting memoir of her childhood in Delhi in an age and a society that has since disappeared.
Madhur (meaning “sweet as honey”) Jaffrey grew up in a large family compound where her grandfather often presided over dinners at which forty or more members of his extended family would savor together the wonderfully flavorful dishes that were forever imprinted on Madhur’s palate.

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I thought this tree looks like an American bison lying on it’s side. His head is on the right with horns on top and his nose into the ground. Do you see it? Or have I been socially isolated too long!

4. Tree- A Life Story by David Suzuki.

Tree SuzukiOnly God can make a tree,” wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a “biography” of this extraordinary—and extraordinarily important—organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism’s modest origins that begin with a dramatic burst of millions of microscopic grains of pollen.

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A bit of minimalism.

5. My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos.

my-sweet-orange-tree

Five-year-old Zezé lives in Rio de Janeiro, in a forgotten slump in great poverty. But Zezé is not alone. In this world of scolding and beating, he has discovered a magical universe where he spends most of his time: the realm of imagination. There rules a sweet orange tree called Minguinho, and he is a tree like no other: he can talk.

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Little Mr OlliePants. Are we done with this yet?

 

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Stay safe everyone.

 

19 thoughts on “A New Idea for a Blog Post”

  1. What a great post and a good idea for keeping us occupied. I did check my own bookcases but could find no books with trees, or anything connected to trees, there. I do love trees and enjoy the walks we are doing in the forests these days. Keep going!

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  2. This is odd, I was sure I’d left a comment but now can’t see it. Yiu were wondering about other themes you could use and I remembered a project my husband had to do for his graphic design degree. He had to look for found objects which made the letters of the alphabet . So a crack in a pavement they looked like an A, a shadow that looked like a B, the intersection of branches they looked like X. And so on. You get the idea .

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  3. Yes, I see the bison! I’ve seen real ones on the range while vacationing in Wyoming.
    What an interesting idea for your blog post. And dear, little Ollie is so sweet!

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  4. not a bison, a crocodile! with the head on the left… this is a great idea. trees are one of the chief occupiers of the planet but they don’t get enough respect! re commenting from wordpress to blogspot: i had the same trouble when i was on wp and had to open an account on bspot so i could record comments… i don’t know if that’s something you’ve experienced in other places or not, but there’s probably a solution to it; i just don’t know of one, being computer illiterate for the most part… forgive Ollie even tho he knows exactly what he’s doing!!

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  7. A lovely post, have you read Overstory by Richard Powers definitely a tree themed read there. Ollie is gorgeous.

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    1. NO, I have not heard of him. I have several more tree books on my shelves but if I ever get through ny 1000 books I’ll keep him in mind. Thank you. Ollie is gorgeous but he is very naughty. Don’t let that face fool you. But we love him. 😍😍

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  9. Another tree book: The Word for World is Forest, Ursula Le Guin. It’s a bit of a challenge when I can’t run my eye along my shelves. Mum had a book Green Mountain and Cullenbenbong whose cover was eucalypt rainforest understorey, which I must have read 55 years ago.

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