Thursday Tree Love: Roots

“A tree’s beauty lies in its branches, but its strength lies in its roots.”

― Matshona Dhliwayo

Roots provide a glimpse into the vast support network in an underground world we are only beginning to understand. I find them fascinating.

Here are a few photos I’ve taken of tree roots:

Do you see a lemur face peeking out on the left?

Roots offer footholds like steps on twisting trails.

Roots make cool hide outs for little animals.

Some roots look like legs that could walk away at any moment.

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Thursday tree love is hosted by Parul Thakur on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. For more Tree Love, visit: https://www.happinessandfood.com/thursdaytreelove-92/

#ThursdayTreeLove – 92

Thursday Tree Love: Dogwood Blossoms

Staying home encourages me to take a closer look at nature’s abundance right outside my door. First I was drawn to this twilight sky then noticed the dogwood silhouette.

During the day, the dogwood blossoms have a translucent quality that’s hard to capture with my amateur photography skills, but I still try.

I discovered a single blossom on the ground almost under my feet.

It must have been a gift

from the tree to me and from me to you.

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Thursday Tree Love is a photo feature hosted by Parul Thakur

on the second and fourth Thursday of each month.

For more tree love, visit:

https://www.happinessandfood.com/thursdaytreelove-84/

 

 

Old City Trees #ThursdayTreeLove

Yesterday evening as David and I drove through historic downtown, I took a closer look at the old trees lining the streets and medians. They coexist with cars, pollution, and wires. Some have been cut into unnatural shapes to give right of way to electrical lines. This was easier to see since it’s still winter and the leaves are sparse. This type of cutting can not be good for the trees, but most seem to adapt.

Still, the old city trees, which are mostly oaks, persevere. They’ve given us oxygen, shade, and habitat for birds, bugs, and squirrels for more years than any living person can remember.

Imagine the vast underground network of roots and connecting organisms that hold this community of trees together through storms and human interference

Please join me in sending  gratitude, love, and respect to old city trees everywhere

and to those working to protect them.  

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Thursday Tree Love is a photo feature hosted by Parul Thakur on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. You’ll find more tree love below:

https://www.happinessandfood.com/thursdaytreelove-83/

 

 

 

Thursday Tree Love: Transformation

“Death does not have the last word; God has the last word, and that word is love.”

Forward Day by Day

We are beginning to understand that trees are connected by an underground network which allows them to communicate with and support each other. Writing about Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees, Richard Grant writes this in Smithsonian Magazine:

Once, he came across a gigantic beech stump in this forest, four or five feet across. The tree was felled 400 or 500 years ago, but scraping away the surface with his penknife, Wohlleben found something astonishing: the stump was still green with chlorophyll. There was only one explanation. The surrounding beeches were keeping it alive, by pumping sugar to it through the network.
Read more here.

The communal life of trees suggests a different awareness of life and death as we’ve know it.  In a natural forest, seemingly dead trees provide habitat for all kinds of small animals as well as living moss and lichen. What we perceive as dead and dying trees are very important for the life of a forest. However, this living system is destroyed in Christmas tree “farms” and wherever trees are clear cut.

This new awareness of how trees live in nature reinforces my fascination with a tree I discovered near the Linville River. I did not photograph the top of the tree, because there wasn’t much there from my perspective. The tree appeared to be dead. But the life growing on its trunk was beautiful.

The tree’s root system is part of the trail and strong enough to walk on. Maybe this tree is not dead as we tend to interpret death. Science teaches us that energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed, but they can be transformed.

Thursday Tree Love is a photo feature hosted by Parul Thakur on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. For more tree love, visit:

https://www.happinessandfood.com/thursdaytreelove-77/