Enjoy this very colorful and personal collection by Trish Nicholson:
Greetings from my tree house. For all who wish peace and love for the world’s people, its creatures and plants, I have assembled this tree-themed photo essay.
Trees especially, because, though in many places in the world it is the season for cutting down and decorating trees to display indoors, I prefer my trees to remain alive in their natural decorations, their roots deep in the earth-world they nurture with their embrace.
All the trees featured here are native to New Zealand, many are endemic – they grow nowhere else in the world. Some are male, some female, some bisexual; their juvenile appearance may be different from their adult form. I love them all. I raised and planted them all during the last seventeen years (except the tree house of course).
I part the out thrusting branches And come in beneath The blessed and the blessing trees. ~Wendell Berry
I have always felt the living presence Of trees The forest that calls to me as deeply As I breathe, As though the woods were marrow of my bone ~Michael S. Glaser
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come. ~Chinese proverb
And see the peaceful trees extend Their myriad leaves in leisured dance ~Kathleen Raine
That tree whose leaves are trembling: it is yearning for something. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza
I was raised by the song of the murmuring grove. ~Friedrich Holderlin
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, ~ Robert Frost
Walk idly around it and rest under its shadow. Chuang Tzu
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. ~ Hal Borland
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. ~ William Shakespeare
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. ~ Kahlil Gibran
a green thought in a green shade. ~ Andrew Marvell
In whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent and intimate hours. ~ Marcel Proust
Every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver. Martin Luther
What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky? o~ Pablo Neruda
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Let me desire and wish well the life These trees may live when I No longer rise in the mornings. ~ Wendell Berry
That my soul may repose on the branches of the trees which I planted, ~ Part of an inscription on an ancient Egyptian tomb
[With gratitude to online sources of poetry: Spirit of Trees; Poetry in Nature; Interesting Literature]
Dr Trish Nicholson, a social anthropologist, is the author of “A Biography of Story, A Brief History of Humanity”, a global social history of the power of stories in the comedy and tragedy of human affairs.
“Stories are like deep-rooted trees that survive through flood, drought, heat and cold to provide fruits that nourish each generation gathered within the shade of their branches.”
A Biography of Story, A Brief History of Humanity p.413
Please visit Trish’s website: Words in the Treehouse
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