I live in a place where the interior can often be disappointing, but the exterior performs so much better in the shape of the plants, shrubs, lawns and magnificent, mature trees contained within the gardens.
One of those trees is looking particularly magnificent right now. It is a holly tree, or some kind of hybrid, where the leaves are shaped like holly leaves, but are not spiky and are tinged with yellow, all year round. Every year, around December, it produces a few red berries. But this year, the berries started to appear in September, and they grew in number to such a point that in October, the tree is really very full of berries. I don’t know whether that is due to some kind of weather event, or something to do with the age of the tree, but one way or another I have fallen in love with the sight of it.
These days, I don’t go very far afield, but when I did, my two most favoured environments were by large bodies of water, or in woods, surrounded by trees, or sometimes in places where these aspects of nature were combined. There is a peace brought to us as humans by both of these giants of nature.
Trees have always held great fascination for me, both in their huge, magnificent presence, and in their ability to stop me in my tracks, and to have me contemplate my existence in relation to their dominance and resilience as a life form on this planet, long before humans came along, and they are likely to be here long after humans have been erased from the planet, too. Thus, I stand in respect for these giants.
Fraser
October 2023