Bended tree on 09 March 2013

 

Morning walk to Meadowbrook Golf Course

 

Scenes from a Canadian cottage garden

 Photographs taken the evening of September 7, 2023.

Evening, and the light is coming in diagonally and preparing 
for ever diminishing brightness

Phlox are back for a second bloom

 

On the right, that's a sumac tree that self-seeded
and in three years is at least 15 feet high

The brown-eyed Susans are reaching
the end of summer, the cone flowers
are mostly finished

See those little things towards the right?
They are a cloud of little flies one sees 
in the summer

Sometimes the dying and dead flowers
can be attractive

There is that sumac again

A hollyhock, they are a lot more difficult to grow
than they should be; they were weeds in my youth,
now they are biennials and celebrated when flowering

A huge hosta, as though I have some special
ability to grow hostas... well, they grow themselves
and the best advice is to leave them alone and they'll get it right

The house is covered in vines as though old people
who don't maintain their home live here. . . someone tells
me they are bad for the brick work and I plan to cut them back

Some planning can go a long way

Black currants I planted three years ago

This did so well

My wife planted this gingko tree about fifteen
years ago beside our front lawn, it has done well

16 May 2010, thirteen years ago

 

It was thirteen years ago, mid-May 2010, and I spent most of the month in Vancouver, doing research at the UBC library, staying at the residence on the UBC campus, visiting with CZ's family and hanging out with CZ. Here is the old apple tree in our backyard in Montreal; whatever there was of a garden can't be seen here, it was on the periphery of the garden but it was there, and spring had arrived in Montreal. It was 16 May 2010.

Somewhere on Mount Royal

It was the end of April 2011; I was walking on Mount Royal, the mountain at the center of Montreal and a very popular park. The spirit of trees is not only in the tree, it's in the shadow of the trees, it's in the roots and branches and the seasonal change of leaves, from green to fall's variety of colours to these bare branches and the carpet of leaves on the ground. 

Out walking this January morning

 

"‘Throwing a Tree’, New Forest" by Thomas Hardy

 

I 

The two executioners stalk along over the knolls, 

Bearing two axes with heavy heads shining and wide, 

And a long limp two-handled saw toothed for cutting great boles, limp – flexible; boles - trunks 

And so they approach the proud tree that bears the death-mark on its side. * 

II 

Jackets doffed they swing axes and chop away just above ground, doffed – taken off 

And the chips fly about and lie white on the moss and fallen leaves; chips – small pieces of 

Till a broad deep gash in the bark is hewn all the way round, wood; gash – wound; hewn - cut 

And one of them tries to hook upward a rope, which at last he achieves. 

III 

The saw then begins, till the top of the tall giant shivers: 

The shivers are seen to grow greater with each cut than before: 

They edge out the saw, tug the rope; but the tree only quivers, 

And kneeling and sawing again, they step back to try pulling once more. 

IV 

Then, lastly, the living mast sways, further sways: with a shout mast – long upright pole 

Job and Ike rush aside. Reached the end of its long staying powers 

The tree crashes downward: it shakes all its neighbours throughout, 

And two hundred years' steady growth has been ended in less than two hours. 

* death-mark – a chalked or painted mark to show it is to be felled. To throw a tree is to fell a tree, bring it to the ground. 

"The Trees are Down" by Charlotte Mew

—and he cried with a loud voice:
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—
(Revelation)

They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.

For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,

The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,

With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.

I remember one evening of a long past Spring

Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.

I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,

But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.

The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough

   On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,

             Green and high

             And lonely against the sky.

                   (Down now!—)

             And but for that,   

             If an old dead rat

Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.

It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;

These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:

When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away

Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.

It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;

Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,   

             In the March wind, the May breeze,

In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.

             There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;

             They must have heard the sparrows flying,   

And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—

             But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:

             ‘Hurt not the trees.’

Charlotte Mew, “The Trees are Down” from Collected Poems and Prose (Manchester, England: Carcanet Press Ltd., 1981).

Source: Collected Poems and Prose (Carcanet Press Limited, 1981)

Farewell, Tree

We've just had some of the big snow storm that crippled parts of Canada and the United States; some people here lost electricity due to the strong winds but, overall, Montreal was spared the very worst of the storm. But what wasn't spared was a tree we had at the front of the house; it was never much of a tree and for years I had a wire connected from the tree to the wall of the house, to hold it just in case it fell over. 

Now the tree is gone. We planted the tree at least twenty years ago; farewell twenty years of growing, Tree; farewell to 20 to 25 feet in height, Tree. The tree didn't collapse, it broke under the weight of the snow. Then I had the job of cutting it up; which, against my self-doubts, I did. 

I was of two minds regarding losing the tree. I wanted the tree but not necessarily this tree . . . although better this tree than no tree at all which is what I now have. It was never a great tree, it was a good enough tree; it tended to thinning out, but a few years ago I topped the tree and forced the growth to the bottom branches and the whole tree filled out nicely. That improved the tree. A tree, even this tree, adds a lot to the landscaping of a house, remove the tree and you are no longer distracted from the house that needs painting, pointing, and general maintenance. And I am basically a tree lover and don't like to cut down any tree. Farewell, Tree . . .

I wasn't sure I was up to cutting up the tree; I'm not young, but I did it. And then, a few days after the tree collapsed, I noticed from a basement window chick-a-dees walking around under the cut branches of the tree, finding something to eat. They missed the tree. And later, outside, I saw chick-a-dees sitting on the cut branches, I felt like a traitor to the birds, but I wasn't, I didn't cause the tree to break, all I did was cut up the branches. But the chick-a-dees missed the tree. And then I remembered that I used to sit in our living room, just a few feet from where the tree had been outside, and I could hear chick-a-dees in the tree, they'd sit on the branches, they used the tree, they liked the tree, they were happy in the tree, and here I was cutting up the branches. So, now, the tree has to be replaced with another tree.

Farewell, Tree

Farewell, Tree

That's the tree, on the left, in October

That's the tree, on the right

And now I miss the tree. 

Trees and shadows

These photographs were taken not far from the rear entrance to the golf course grounds, not even up to the construction site where the remains of the St. Pierre River are being buried. What interests me here are the trees and shadows from the trees; the spiritual presence of the trees. In this life we are alone, we stand alone, like the trees. It was May 10th, a beautiful day for a long walk.