I suppose this image is about design. But it is also about people who have lived for generations with the forest. Wood takes on many important facets of their lives.
What do you do with wood? On this window sill is a painted wooden model of a village in the woods.
The village in the woods.
My heart’s in the forest.
Hamamelis species
Witch-hazel
Can anyone share with me witch lore about this plant?
Early March, full flower, no leaves, yet.
Every so often something makes me take a photo–something?
Walnut tree–Juglans nigra
Is it my eyes, is it my heart, is it paranormal?
I don’t know. But Alfred Joyce Kilmer wrote, in his poem ‘Trees’:
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.
My photos may not be technically the best but they do have my heart in them. And I love living in the Swiss Highlands because such simple things as the beauty of a tree have become embedded in their culture for all to appreciate.
A few years back, I posted a story here entitled ‘Landscapeyness’. The title was not so accurate related to its content about trees and culture in the Swiss Highlands. The following image shares the flavor.
Forest, animals, people, nurture, rest, music, landscape…
The artwork is called Schnerenschnit.
Fog.
This is not fog.
What is fresh air?
Settled science? Humans and animals–oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Plants–carbon dioxide in, oxygen out.
In cold weather those are small clouds coming out of our nose when we breathe.
Does the earth breathe out clouds like we do?
Mountains, creeks and lakes come together with temperatures just above freezing and a light drizzle from cloudy skies…that makes my day.
The play of air, water and earth can be visualized best by observing the visual interplay of low level clouds–they appear and disappear with a rhythm and frequency that reminds me of my own breaths.
On a calm day, the very low clouds come and go as if breaths from a huge giant–the earth itself.
What is fresh air if it is not air that has been filtered by plants …or filtered by earth…or filtered by both.
Think about it the next time you inhale a deep breath of fresh air.
Think about it the next time you exhale a cloud.
Clouds often arise from creek beds like this.
Cloud arising from adjacent forest.
Clouds arising from the earth via forests and creeks have a scaled up size and time span not dissimilar in proportion to small individual human exhales. They appear…
…and they disappear.
For me, the action is at the cloud edges.
Inhale…exhale…repeat…more slowly…more deeply…recharge is real.
The unpredictable dynamic mystifies.
I better post this before a serious snowfall. The colorful golden beauty of the first image is that it occurs above the tree line, above 2,000 meters elevation.
The lift, for access to these areas, has already been closed for maintenance prior to the upcoming ski season. So, I screen captured the image from a 24/7/365 webcam, at Jungfrau.ch.
This golden color arises after the evening temperatures regularly drop below freezing. The color will be hidden any day now when the first snowfall arrives. This is a view of the Grosse Scheidegg pass (2,300 meters elevation) just east of Grindelwald.
The last two images are from the Japanese Ginkgo. It holds its bright yellow gold leaves until the first major frost–then the leaves drop almost all at once. At 600 meters elevation, the first frost arrived this week.
Ginkgo biloba at 600 meters elevation 20Nov2018, Interlaken, Switzerland.
Goldener Herbst.
I am obsessed with the magic of clouds rising from nothing.
But what is that nothing?
Imagine what you might see, feel, hear underneath that dark, 100 foot tall forest canopy as a cloud just begins to emerge from around you?
This mixed evergreen and deciduous forest has a canopy that is more than a ten story building, 30 meters (100feet) tall. On the forest floor, it is dark. And the floor is not level. Beneath the canopy is a steeply varied topography–very exciting–filled with surprising variety of flora and fauna–if you are quiet and patient.
I just can’t wander too far from Gnome. Are they following me?
The black cat is cool with all of it.
I am looking at a bosque of Plane trees planted next to the Interlaken Ost train station. In the recent afternoon sun, I could call them butterscotch or toffee and be happy.
Often, in the urban public realm, simpler is better.
Platanus acerifolia?
Sometimes I just don’t understand.
But when I see beauty, the need for understanding diminishes.
Neighbors—good, bad or indifferent.
Do they mind their own business?
Do they foist their life philosophy?
Or…are you glad for them?
My neighbors—why are they always so jolly?
