Greetings!

Welcome to the second weekly photo essay written specifically in blog format.  I appreciate the feedback you sent me last week, which was heavily in favor of the new format.  Since last Monday I have fixed the “Contact Me” page, which does now work, and I have continued with the task of adding older essays that can be accessed from the “Pre-Blog Essays” sidebar on the right hand side of the page, and I have added the original title of the essay to the date.

This week’s theme simply emerged while I was looking for images to illustrate a somewhat different theme.

The well known poem by Joyce Kilmer begins:

Earlier this year, I was walking past some relatively young conifers when I noticed that the immature pine cones were purple!  Not being a dendrologist, I don’t know what species this is.

I do think that the seedling in this next image is an oak of some kind.  It has sprouted in the soil and dead leaves that have collected inside the decaying stump of a much older tree, and to me is a beautiful example of life coming from death.

This next image is just a peaceful springtime glade here at Lansdowne Woods.

Once a seedling has established itself, it can grow and exert significant pressure on surrounding solid objects, whether that be rootlets growing into tiny cracks in sewer pipes, with unfortunate consequences, or a tree seemingly growing out of a rock.

The next tree stands as a silent witness and memorial to the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building which killed 168 people.  The building itself stood where the reflecting pool (in the foreground) is now.  The building in the background now houses the Museum.  Known as The Survivor Tree, it is an American Elm and is over 90 years old.  Like the building behind it, it was severely damaged in the bombing, but was nursed back to life, and is now a major part of the outdoor memorial.

On one side of its scarred and gnarled trunk, the Survivor Tree has some features which some people say looks like an agonized human face.  The face in the tree below merely looks a little skeptical.  While working on this image, I decided that it was one of those images that works better in black and white.

On a stroll through our woods in January of last year, I was walking towards the sun and was struck by the shadows the tree trunks cast.  I was even more intrigued when I turned around so that the sun was behind me.  With a little bit of effort I was able to find a spot where I was standing in the shadow of a tree behind me, so that I did not cast a shadow myself.

Sometimes when a tree dies and falls, and its bark sloughs off, it reveals all sort of tracks and holes that were made under the bark by various beetles and other insects.  And sometimes these markings form an interesting design.

And even the dead stump can become a semi-abstract design, especially in the snow!  I played with a black and white version of this image, but I felt that in this case the hint of color was helpful.

I will close with a paraphrase of the last stanza of Joyce Kilmer’s poem:

Enjoy Columbus Day and have a great week!